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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGH 
EARLY LIFE 1 

CHAPTER II. 
CONVICTION OF SIN 16 

CHAPTER III. 

" GRACE ABOUNDING " 35 

CHAPTER IV. 

CALL TO THE MINISTRY 52 

CHAPTER V. 

ARREST AND TRIAL 65 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE BEDFORD GAOL 77 



vi CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN . . 



CHAPTER VIII. 

"the holy war" 113 

CHAPTER IX. 
"the pilgrim's progress" 149 

CHAPTER X. 

LAST DAYS AND DEATH « • . .... 170 



BUNYAN. 



CHAPTER I. 

EARLY LIFE. 

" I was of a low and inconsiderable generation, my fa- 
ther's house being of that rank that is meanest and most 
despised of all families in the land." " I never went to 
school, to Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up in my 
father's house in a very mean condition, among a com- 
pany of poor countrymen." " Nevertheless, I bless God 
that by this door He brought me into the world to par- 
take of the grace and life that is by Christ in His Gospel." 
This is the account given of himself and his origin by a 
man whose writings have for two centuries affected the 
spiritual opinions of the English race in every part of the 
world more powerfully than any book or books, except 
the Bible. 

John Bunyan was born at Elstow, a village near Bed- 
ford, in the year 1628. It was a memorable epoch in 
English history, for in that year the House of Commons 
extorted the consent of Charles I. to the Petition of Right. 
The stir of politics, however, did not reach the humble 
household into which the little boy was introduced. His 
father was hardly occupied in earning bread for his wife 
and children as a mender of pots and kettles: a tinker — 



2 BUN Y AN. [chai. 

working in neighbours' houses or at home, at such busi- 
ness as might be brought to him. "The Bunyans," says 
a friend, " were of the national religion, as men of that 
calling commonly were." Bunyan himself, in a passage 
which has been always understood to refer to his father, 
describes him " as an honest, poor labouring man, who, like 
Adam unparadised, had all the world to get his bread in, 
and was very careful to maintain his family." In those 
days there were no village schools in England ; the educa- 
tion of the poor was an apprenticeship to agriculture or 
handicraft ; their religion they learnt at home or in church. 
Young Bunyan was more fortunate. In Bedford there 
was a grammar school, which had been founded in Queen 
Mary's time by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir William 
Harper. Hither, when he was old enough to walk to and 
fro, over the mile of road between Elstow and Bedford, 
the child was sent, if not to learn Aristotle and Plato, to 
learn at least " to read and write according to the rate of 
other poor men's children." 

If religion was not taught at school, it was taught with 
some care in the cottages and farmhouses by parents and 
masters. It was common in many parts of England, as 
late as the end of the last century, for the farmers to 
gather their apprentices about them on Sunday afternoons, 
and to teach them the Catechism. Rude as was Bunyan's 
home, religious notions of some kind had been early and 
vividly impressed upon him. He caught, indeed, the or- 
dinary habits of the boys among whom he was thrown. 
He learnt to use bad language, and he often lied. When 
a child's imagination is exceptionally active, the tempta- 
tions to untruth are correspondingly powerful. The in- 
ventive faculty has. its dangers, and Bunyan was eminently 
gifted in that way. He was a violent, passionate boy be- 



i.] EARLY LIFE. 3 

sides, and thus he says of himself that for lying and swear- 
ing he had no equal, and that his parents did not suffi- 
ciently correct him. Wickedness, he declares in his own 
remorseful story of his early years, became a second nature 
to him. But the estimate which a man forms of himself 
in later life, if he has arrived at any strong abhorrence of 
moral evil, is harsher than others at the time would have 
been likely to have formed. Even then the poor child's 
conscience must have been curiously sensitive, and it re- 
venged itself upon him in singular tortures. 

" My sins," he says, " did so offend the Lord that even 
in my childhood He did scare and affright me with fear- 
ful dreams, and did terrify ine with dreadful visions. I 
have been in my bed greatly afflicted while asleep, with 
apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits, who still, as I 
then thought, laboured to draw me away with them, of 
which I could never be rid. I was afflicted with thoughts 
of the Day of Judgment night and day, trembling at the 
thoughts of the fearful torments of hell fire." When, at 
ten years old, he was running about with his companions 
in "his sports and childish vanities," these terrors contin- 
ually recurred to him, yet " he w r ould not let go his sins." 

Such a boy required rather to be encouraged than 
checked in seeking innocent amusements. Swearing and 
lying were definite faults which ought to have been cor- 
rected ; but his parents, perhaps, saw that there was some- 
thing unusual in the child. To them he probably ap- 
peared not worse than other boys, but considerably better. 
They may have thought it more likely that he would con- 
quer his own bad inclinations by his own efforts, than that 
they could mend him by rough rebukes. 

When he left school he would naturally have been 
bound apprentice, but his father brought him up at his 
1* 



4 BUNYAN. [chap. 

own trade. Thus he lived at home, and grew to manhood 
there, forming his ideas of men and things out of such 
opportunities as the Elstow neighbourhood afforded. 

From the time when the Reformation brought them a 
translation of it, the Bible was the book most read — it 
was often the only book which was read — in humble 
English homes. Familiarity with the words had not yet 
trampled the sacred writings into practical barrenness. 
No doubts or questions had yet risen about the Bible's 
nature or origin. It was received as the authentic word 
of God Himself. The Old and New Testament alike rep- 
resented the world as the scene of a struggle between 
good and evil spirits ; and thus every ordinary incident of 
daily life was an instance or illustration of God's provi- 
dence. This was the universal popular belief, not admit- 
ted only by the intellect, but accepted and realised by the 
imagination. No one questioned it, save a few speculative 
philosophers in their closets. The statesman in the House 
of Commons, the judge on the Bench, the peasant in a 
midland village, interpreted literally by this rule the phe- 
nomena which they experienced or saw. They not only 
believed that God had miraculously governed the Israelites, 
but they believed that as directly and immediately He 
governed England in the seventeenth century. They not 
only believed that there had been a witch at Endor, but 
they believed that there were witches in their own villages, 
who had made compacts with the devil himself. They 
believed that the devil still literally walked the earth like 
a roaring lion ; that he and the evil angels were perpetually 
labouring to destroy the souls of men; and that God was 
equally busy overthrowing the devil's work, and bringing 
sin and crimes to eventual punishment. 

In this light the common events of life were actually 



i] EARLY LIFE. 5 

looked at and understood, and the air was filled with anec- 
dotes so told as to illustrate the belief. These stories and 
these experiences were Bunyan's early mental food. One 
of them, which had deeply impressed the imagination of 
the Midland counties, was the story of " Old Tod." This 
man came one day into court, in the Summer Assizes at 
Bedford, " all in a dung sweat," to demand justice upon 
himself as a felon. No one had accused him, but God's 
judgment was not to be escaped, and he was forced to ac- 
cuse himself. " My Lord," said Old Tod to the judge, " I 
have been a thief from my childhood. I have been a thief 
ever since. There has not been a robbery committed these 
many years, within so many miles of this town, but I have 
been privy to it." The judge, after a conference, agreed 
to indict him of certain felonies which he had acknowl- 
edged. He pleaded guilty, implicating his wife along with 
him, and they were both hanged. 

An intense belief in the moral government of the world 
creates what it insists upon. Horror at sin forces the 
sinner to confess it, and makes others eager to punish it. 
"God's revenge against murder and adultery" becomes 
thus an actual fact, and justifies the conviction in which it 
rises. Bunyan was specially attentive to accounts of judg- 
ments upon swearing, to which he was himself addicted. 
He tells a story of a man at Wimbledon, who, after utter- 
ing some strange blasphemy, w r as struck with sickness, and 
died cursing. Another such scene he probably witnessed 
himself, 1 and never forgot. An alehouse-keeper in the 
neighbourhood of Elstow had a son who was half-witted. 
The favourite amusement, when a party was collected drink- 

1 The story is told by Mr. Attentive in the Life of Mr. Badman; 
but it is almost certain that Bunyan was relating his own experience. 



6 BUNYAN. [chap. 

ing, was for the father to provoke the lad's temper, and 
for the lad to curse his father and wish the devil had him. 
The devil at last did have the alehouse-keeper, and rent 
and tore him till he died. " I," says Bunyan, " was eye 
and ear witness of what I here say. I have heard Ned in 
his roguery cursing his father, and his father laughing 
thereat most heartily, still provoking of Ned to curse that 
his mirth might be increased. I saw his father also when 
he was possessed. I saw him in one of his fits, and saw 
his flesh as it was thought gathered up in a heap about 
the bigness of half an egg, to the unutterable torture and 
affliction of the old man. There was also one Freeman, 
who was more than an ordinary doctor, sent for to cast 
out the devil, and I was there when he attempted to do it. 
The manner whereof was this. They had the possessed in 
an outroom, and laid him upon his belly upon a form, with 
his head hanging down over the form's end. Then they 
bound him down thereto ; which done, they set a pan of 
coals under his mouth, and put something therein which 
made a great smoke — by this means, as it was said, to 
fetch out the devil. There they kept the man till he was 
almost smothered in the smoke, but no devil came out of 
him, at which Freeman was somewhat abashed, the man 
greatly afflicted, and I made to go away wondering and 
fearing. In a little time, therefore, that which possessed 
the man carried him out of the world, according to the 
cursed wishes of his son." 

The wretched alehouse-keeper's life was probably sacri- 
ficed in this attempt to dispossess the devil. But the inci- 
dent would naturally leave its mark on the mind of an im- 
pressionable boy. Bunyan ceased to frequent such places 
after he began to lead a religious life. The story, there- 
fore, most likely belongs to the experiences of his first 



i.] EARLY LIFE. 1 

youth after he left school ; and there may have been many 
more of a similar kind, for, except that he was steady at 
his trade, he grew up a wild lad, the ringleader of the vil- 
lage apprentices in all manner of mischief. He had no 
books, except a life of Sir Bevis of Southampton, which 
would not tend to sober him ; indeed, he soon forgot all 
that he had learnt at school, and took to amusements and 
doubtful adventures, orchard - robbing, perhaps, or poach- 
ing, since he hints that he might have brought himself 
within reach of the law. In the most passionate language 
of self-abhorrence, he accuses himself of all manner of sins, 
yet it is improbable that he appeared to others what in 
later life he appeared to himself. He judged his own 
conduct as he believed that it was regarded by his Maker, 
by whom he supposed eternal torment to have been assign- 
ed as the just retribution for the lightest offence. Yet he 
was never drunk. He who never forgot anything with 
which he could charge himself, would not have passed over 
drunkenness, if he could remember that he had been guilty 
of it ; and he distinctly asserts, also, that he was never in 
a single instance unchaste. In our days, a rough tinker 
who could say as much for himself after he had grown to 
manhood would be regarded as a model of self-restraint. 
If, in Bedford and the neighbourhood, there was no young- 
man more vicious than Bunyan, the moral standard of an 
English town in the seventeenth century must have been 
higher than believers in Progress will be pleased to allow. 
He declares that he was without God in the world, and 
in the sense which he afterwards attached to the word this 
was probably true. But serious thoughts seldom ceased 
to work in him. Dreams only reproduce the forms and 
feelings with which the waking imagination is most en- 
gaged. Bunyan's rest continued to be haunted with the 



8 BUNYAN. [chap. 

phantoms which had terrified him when a child. He start- 
ed in his sleep, and frightened the family with his cries. 
He saw evil spirits in monstrous shapes, and fiends blowing 
flames out of their nostrils. " Once," says a biographer, 
who knew him well, and had heard the story of his visions 
from his own lips, " he dreamed that he saw the face of 
heaven as it were on fire, the firmament crackling and 
shivering with the noise of mighty thunder, and an arch- 
angel flew in the midst of heaven, sounding a trumpet, and 
a glorious throne was seated in the east, whereon sat One 
in brightness like the morning star. Upon which he, think- 
ing it was the end of the world, fell upon his knees and 
said, ' Oh, Lord, have mercy on me ! What shall I do ? 
The Day of Judgment is come, and I am not prepared.' " 

At another time " he dreamed that he was in a pleasant 
place jovial and rioting, when an earthquake rent the earth, 
out of which came bloody flames, and the figures of men 
tossed up in globes of fire, and falling down again with 
horrible cries and shrieks and execrations, while devils 
mingled among them, and laughed aloud at their torments. 
As he stood trembling, the earth sank under him, and a 
circle of flames embraced him. But when he fancied he 
was at the point to perish, One in shining white raiment 
descended and plucked him out of that dreadful place, 
while the devils cried after him to take him to the punish- 
ment which his sins had deserved. Yet he escaped the 
danger, and leapt for joy when he awoke and found it was 
a dream." 

Mr. Southey, who thinks wisely that Bunyan's biogra- 
phers have exaggerated his early faults, considers that at 
worst he was a sort of " blackguard." This, too, is a 
wrong word. Young village blackguards do not dream 
of archangels flying through the midst of heaven, nor were 



l] EARLY LIFE. 9 

these imaginations invented afterwards, or rhetorically ex- 
aggerated. Bunyan was undoubtedly given to story-tell- 
ing as a boy, and the recollection of it made him peculiar- 
ly scrupulous in his statements in later life. One trait he 
mentions of himself which no one would have thought of 
who had not experienced the feeling, yet every person can 
understand it and sympathise with it. These spectres and 
hobgoblins drove him wild. He says, " I was so overcome 
with despair of life and heaven, that I should often wish 
either that there had been no hell, or that I had been a 
devil ; supposing that they were only tormentors, and that, 
if it must needs be that I went thither, I might be rather 
a tormentor than tormented myself." 

The visions at last ceased. God left him to himself, as 
he puts it, and gave him over to his own wicked inclina- 
tions. He fell, he says, into all kinds of vice and un- 
godliness without further check. The expression is very 
strong, yet when we look for particulars we can find only 
that he was fond of games which Puritan preciseness dis- 
approved. He had high animal spirits, and engaged in 
lawless enterprises. Once or twice he nearly lost his life. 
He is sparing of details of his outward history, for he re- 
garded it as nothing but vanity ; but his escapes from 
death were providences, and therefore he mentions them. 
He must have gone to the coast somewhere, for he was 
once almost drowned in a creek of the sea. He fell out 
of a boat into the river at another time, and it seems that 
he could not swim. Afterwards he seized hold of an ad- 
der, and was not bitten by it. These mercies were sent 
as warnings, but he says that he was too careless to profit 
by them. He thought that he had forgotten God alto- 
gether, and yet it is plain that he had not forgotten. A 
bad young man, who has shaken off religion because it is 



10 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

a restraint, observes with malicious amusement the faults 
of persons who make a profession of religion. He infers 
that they do not really believe it, and only differ from 
their neighbours in being hypocrites. Bunyan notes this 
disposition in his own history of Mr. Badman. Of him- 
self he says : " Though I could sin with delight and ease, 
and take pleasure in the villanies of my companions, even 
then, if I saw wicked things done by them that professed 
goodness, it would make my spirit tremble. Once, when 
I was in the height of my vanity, hearing one swear that 
was reckoned a religious man, it made my heart to ache." 
He was now seventeen, and we can form a tolerably ac- 
curate picture of him — a tall, active lad, working as his 
father's apprentice at his pots and kettles, ignorant of 
books, and with no notion of the world beyond what he 
could learn in his daily drudgery, and the talk of the ale- 
house and the village green; inventing lies to amuse his 
companions, and swearing that they were true; playing 
bowls and tipcat, ready for any reckless action, and al- 
ways a leader in it, yet all the while singularly pure from 
the more brutal forms of vice, and haunted with feverish 
thoughts, which he tried to forget in amusements. It has 
been the fashion to take his account of himself literally, 
and represent him as the worst of reprobates, in order to 
magnify the effects of his conversion, and perhaps to make 
intelligible to his admiring followers the reproaches which 
he heaps upon himself. They may have felt that they 
could not be wrong in explaining his own language in the 
only sense in which they could attach a meaning to it. 
Yet, sinner though he may have been, like all the rest of 
us, his sins were not the sins of coarseness and vulgarity. 
They were the sins of a youth of sensitive nature and very 
peculiar gifts — gifts which brought special temptations 



i.] EARLY LIFE. 11 

with them, and inclined him to be careless and desperate, 
yet from causes singularly unlike those which- are usually 
operative in dissipated and uneducated boys. 

It was now the year 1645. Naseby Field was near, and 
the first Civil War was drawing to its close. At this cri- 
sis Bunyan was, as he says, drawn to be a soldier; and it 
is extremely characteristic of him and of the body to which 
he belonged, that he leaves us to guess on which side he 
served. He does not tell us himself.- His friends in after- 
life did not care to ask him, or he to inform them, or else 
they also thought the matter of too small importance to 
be worth mentioning with exactness. There were two tra- 
ditions, and his biographers chose between them as we do. 
Close as the connection was in that great struggle between 
civil and religious liberty — flung as Bunyan was flung into 
the very centre of the conflict between the English people 
and the Crown and Church and aristocracy — victim as he 
was himself of intolerance and persecution, he never but 
once took any political part, and then only in signing an 
address to Cromwell. He never showed any active inter- 
est in political questions; and if he spoke on such ques- 
tions at all after the Restoration, it was to advise submis- 
sion to the Stuart Government. By the side of the stu- 
pendous issues of human life, such miserable rights as men 
might pretend to in this world were not worth contending 
for. The only right of man that he thought much about, 
was the right to be eternally damned if he did not lay 
hold of grace. King and subject were alike creatures, 
whose sole significance lay in their individual immortal 
souls. Their relations with one another upon earth were 
nothing in the presence of the awful judgment which 
awaited them both. Thus, whether Bunyan's brief career 

in the aony was under Charles or under Fairfax must re- 
B 



12 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

main doubtful. Probability is on the side of his having 
been with the Royalists. His father was of "the national 
religion." He himself had as yet no special convictions 
of his own. John Gifford, the Baptist minister at Bed- 
ford, had been a Royalist. The only incident which Bun- 
yan speaks of connected with his military experience 
points in the same direction. " When I was a soldier," 
he says, " I was with others drawn out to go to such a 
place to besiege it. But when I was just ready to go, one 
of the company desired to go in my room. Coming to 
the siege as he stood sentinel he was shot in the heart 
with a musket bullet and died." Tradition agrees that 
the place to which these words refer was Leicester. Leices- 
ter was stormed by the King's troops a few days before 
the battle of Naseby. It was recovered afterwards by the 
Parliamentarians, but on the second occasion there was no 
fighting, as it capitulated without a shot being fired. Mr. 
Carlyle supposes that Bun van was not with the attacking 
party, but was in the town as one of the garrison, and was 
taken prisoner there. But this cannot be, for he says ex- 
pressly that he was one of the besiegers. Legend gathers 
freely about eminent men, about men especially who are 
eminent in religion, whether they are Catholic or Protes- 
tant. Lord Macaulay is not only positive that the hero of 
the English Dissenters fought on the side of the Common- 
wealth, but he says, without a word of caution on the im- 
perfection of the evidence, " His Greatheart, his Captain 
Boanerges, and his Captain Credence, are evidently por- 
traits of which the originals were among those martial 
saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army." 1 
If the martial saints had impressed Bunyan so deeply, 

1 Life of Bunyan : Collected Works, vol. vli. p. 29$. 



i.] EARLY LIFE. 13 

it is inconceivable that he should have made no more al- 
lusion to his military service than in this brief passage. 
He refers to the siege and all connected with it merely 
as another occasion of his own providential escapes from 
death. 

Let the truth of this be what it may, the troop to which 
he belonged was soon disbanded. He returned at the end 
of the year to his tinker's work at Elstow much as he had 
left it. The saints, if he had met with saints, had not 
converted him. " I sinned still," he says, " and grew more 
and more rebellious against God and careless of my own 
salvation." An important change of another kind, how- 
ever, lay before him. Young as he was, he married. His 
friends advised it, for they thought that marriage would 
make him steady. The step was less imprudent than it 
would have been had Bunyan been in a higher rank of 
life, or had aimed at rising into it. The girl whom he 
chose was a poor orphan, but she had been carefully and 
piously brought up, and from her acceptance of him, 
something more may be inferred about his character. 
Had he been a dissolute, idle scamp, it is unlikely that a 
respectable woman would have become his wife when he 
was a mere boy. His sins, whatever these were, had not 
injured his outward circumstances ; it is clear that all along 
he worked skilfully and industriously at his tinkering busi- 
ness. He had none of the habits which bring men to beg- 
gary. From the beginning of his life to the end of it he 
was a prudent, careful man, and, considering the station to 
which he belonged, a very successful man. 

"I lighted on a wife, 1 ' he says, "whose father was 
counted godly. We came together as poor as poor might 
be, not having so much household stuff as a dish or a 
spoon between us. But she had for her portion two 



14 BUNYAN. [chap. 

books, The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, and The 
Practice of Piety, which her father had left her when he 
died. In these two books I sometimes read with her. I 
found some things pleasing to me, but all this while I met 
with no conviction. She often told me what a godly man 
her father was ; how he would reprove and correct vice 
both in his house and among his neighbours ; what a strict 
and holy life he lived in his day, both in word and deed. 
These books, though they did not reach my heart, did 
light in me some desire to religion." 

There was still an Established Church in England, and 
the constitution of it had not yet been altered. The Pres- 
byterian platform threatened to take the place of Episco- 
pacy, and soon did take it ; .but the clergyman was still a 
priest, and was still regarded with pious veneration in the 
country districts as a semi-supernatural being. The altar 
yet stood in its place, the minister still appeared in his 
surplice, and the Prayers of the Liturgy continued to be 
read or intoned. The old familiar bells, Catholic as they 
were in all the emotions which they suggested, called 
the congregation together with their musical peal, though 
in the midst of triumphant Puritanism. The Book of 
Sports, which, under an order from Charles I., had been 
read regularly in Church, had in 1644 been laid under a 
ban ; but the gloom of a Presbyterian Sunday was, is, and 
for ever will be detestable to the natural man; and the 
Elstow population gathered persistently after service on 
the village green for their dancing, and their leaping, and 
their archery. Long habit cannot be transformed in a 
day by an Edict of Council, and amidst army manifestoes 
and battles of Marston Moor, and a king dethroned and 
imprisoned, old English life in Bedfordshire preserved its 
familiar features. These Sunday sports had been a special 



i] EARLY LIFE. 15 

delight to Bunyan, and it is to them which he refers in the 
following passage, when speaking of his persistent wicked- 
ness. On his marriage he became regular and respectable 
in his habits. He says, " I fell in with the religion of the 
times to go to church twice a day, very devoutly to say 
and sing as the others did, yet retaining my wicked life. 
Withal I was so overrun with the spirit of superstition 
that I adored with great devotion even all things, both the 
high place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what else 
belonging to the Church, counting all things holy therein 
contained, and especially the priest and clerk most happy 
and without doubt greatly blessed. This conceit grew so 
strong in my spirit that had I but seen a priest, though 
never so sordid and debauched in his life, I should find 
my spirit fall under him, reverence, and be knit to him — 
their name, their garb, and work did so intoxicate and be- 
witch me." 

Surely if there were no other evidence, these words 
would show that the writer of them had never listened to 
the expositions of the martial saints. 



CHAPTER II. 



CONVICTION OF SIN. 



The Pilgrim's Progress is the history of the struggle of 
human nature to overcome temptation and shake off the 
bondage of sin, under the convictions which prevailed 
among serious men in England in the seventeenth century. 
The allegory is the life of its author cast in an imagina- 
tive form. Every step in Christian's journey had been 
first trodden by Bunyan himself; every pang of fear and 
shame, every spasm of despair, every breath of hope and 
consolation, which is there described, is but a reflexion as 
on a mirror from personal experience. It has spoken to 
the hearts of all later generations of Englishmen because 
it came from the heart ; because it is the true record of 
the genuine emotions of a human soul ; and to such a 
record the emotions of other men will respond, as one 
stringed instrument vibrates responsively to another. The 
poet's power lies in creating sympathy ; but he cannot, 
however richly gifted, stir feelings which he has not him- 
self known in all their intensity. 

" Ut ridentibus arrident ita flentibus adflent 
Humani vultus. Si vis me flere dolendum est 
Primum ipsi tibi." 

The religious history of man is essentially the same in 
all ages. It takes its rise in the duality of his nature. He 



chap.il] CONVICTION OF SIN. 17 

is an animal, and as an animal lie desires bodily pleasure 
and shrinks from bodily pain. As a being capable of 
morality, he is conscious that for him there exists a right 
and wrong. Something, whatever that something may 
be, binds him to choose one and avoid the other. This 
is his religion, his religatio, his obligation, in the sense in 
which the Romans, from whom we take it, used the word ; 
and obligation implies some superior power to which man 
owes obedience. The conflict between his two disposi- 
tions agitates his heart and perplexes his intellect. To do 
what the superior power requires of him, he must thwart 
his inclinations. He dreads punishment, if he neglects to 
do it. He invents methods by which he can indulge his 
appetites, and finds a substitute by which he can propi- 
tiate his invisible ruler or rulers. He offers sacrifices ; he 
institutes ceremonies and observances. This is the re- 
ligion of the body, the religion of fear. It is what we 
call superstition. In his nobler moods he feels that this 
is but to evade the difficulty. He perceives that the sac- 
rifice required is the sacrifice of himself. It is not the 
penalty for sin which he must fear, but the sin itself. He 
must conquer his own lower nature. He must detach his 
heart from his pleasures, and he must love good for its 
own sake, and because it is his only real good ; and this is 
spiritual religion or piety. Between these two forms of 
worship of the unseen, the human race has swayed to and 
fro from the first moment in which they learnt to discern 
between good and evil. Superstition attracts, because it 
is indulgent to immorality by providing means by which 
God can be pacified. But it carries its antidote along 
with it, for it keeps alive the sense of God's existence; 
and when it has produced its natural effects, when the 
believer rests in his observances and lives practically as if 



18 BUNYAN. [chap. 

there was no God at all, the conscience again awakes. 
Sacrifices and ceremonies become detested as idolatry, 
and religion becomes conviction of sin, a fiery determina- 
tion to fight with the whole soul against appetite, vanity, 
self-seeking, and every mean propensity which the most 
sensitive alarm can detect. The battle unhappily is at- 
tended with many vicissitudes. The victory, though 
practically it may be won, is never wholly won. The 
struggle brings with it every variety of emotion, alterna- 
tions of humility and confidence, despondency and hope. 
The essence of it is always the same — the effort of the 
higher nature to overcome the lower. The form of it 
varies from period to period, according to the conditions 
of the time, the temperament of different people, the 
conception of the character of the Supreme Power, which 
the state of knowledge enables men to form. It will be 
found even when the puzzled intellect can see no light in 
Heaven at all, in the stern and silent fulfilment of moral 
duty. It will appear as enthusiasm ; it will appear as 
asceticism ; it will appear wherever there is courage to sac- 
rifice personal enjoyment for a cause believed to be holy. 
We must all live. We must all, as we suppose, in one 
shape or other, give account for our actions ; and accounts 
of the conflict are most individually interesting when it 
is an open wrestle with the enemy ; as we find in the 
penances and austerities of the Catholic saints, or when 
the difficulties of belief are confessed and detailed, as in 
David's Psalms, or in the Epistles of St. Paul. St. Paul, 
like the rest of mankind, found a law in his members 
warring against the law which was in his heart. The 
problem presented to him was how one was to be brought 
into subjection to the other, and the solution was by " the 
putting on of Christ." St. Paul's mind was charged with 



ii.] CONVICTION OF SIN. 19 

the ideas of Oriental and Greek philosophy then prevalent 
in the Roman Empire. His hearers understood him, be- 
cause he spoke in the language of the prevailing specula- 
tions. We who have not the clue cannot, perhaps, per- 
fectly understand him ; but his words have been variously 
interpreted as human intelligence has expanded, and have 
formed the basis of the two great theologies which have 
been developed out of Christianity. The Christian relig- 
ion taught that evil could not be overcome by natural 
human strength. The Son of God had come miraculously 
upon earth, had lived a life of stainless purity, and had 
been offered as a sacrifice to redeem men conditionally 
from the power of sin. The conditions, as English Prot- 
estant theology understands them, are nowhere more com- 
pletely represented than in The Pilgrim's Progress. The 
Catholic theology, rising as it did in the two centuries im- 
mediately following St. Paul, approached, probably, nearer 
to what he really intended to say. 

Catholic theology, as a system, is a development of 
Platonism. The Platonists had discovered that the seat 
of moral evil was material substance. In matter, and 
therefore in the human body, there was either some in- 
herent imperfection, or some ingrained perversity and 
antagonism to good. The soul, so long as it was attached 
to the body, was necessarily infected by it ; and as human 
life on earth consisted in the connection of soul and body, 
every single man was necessarily subject to infirmity. 
Catholic theology accepted the position and formulated an 
escape from it. The evil in matter was a fact. It was 
explained by Adam's sin. But there it was. The taint 
was inherited by all Adam's posterity. The flesh of man 
was incurably vitiated, and if he was to be saved, a new 
body must be prepared for him. This Christ had done. 
2 



20 BUNYAN. [chap. 

That Christ's body was not as other men's bodies was 
proved after his resurrection, when it showed itself inde- 
pendent of the limitations of extended substance. In 
virtue of these mysterious properties, it became the body 
of the Corporate Church, into which believers were ad- 
mitted by baptism. The natural body was not at once 
destroyed, but a new element was introduced into it, by 
the power of which, assisted by penance, and mortifica- 
tion, and the spiritual food of the Eucharist, the grosser 
qualities were gradually subdued, and the corporeal system 
was changed. Then body and spirit became alike pure 
together, and the saint became capable of obedience, so 
perfect as not only to suffice for himself, but to supply 
the wants of others. The corruptible put on incorruption. 
The bodies of the saints worked miracles, and their flesh 
was found unaffected by decay after hundreds of years. 

This belief, so long as it was sincerely held, issued nat- 
urally in characters of extreme beauty — of beauty so great 
as almost to demonstrate its truth. The purpose of it, so 
far as it affected action, was self -conquest. Those who 
try with their whole souls to conquer themselves find the 
effort lightened by a conviction that they are receiving- 
supernatural assistance ; and the form in which the Catho- 
lic theory supposed the assistance to be given was at least 
perfectly innocent. But it is in the nature of human 
speculations, though they may have been entertained at 
first in entire good faith, to break down under trial, if 
they are not in conformity with fact. Catholic theology 
furnished Europe with a rule of faith and action which 
lasted 1500 years. For the last three centuries of that 
period it was changing from a religion into a superstition, 
till, from being the world's guide, it became its scandal. 
"The body of Christ" had become a kingdom of this 



ii.] CONVICTION OF SIN. 21 

world, insulting its subjects by the effrontery of its minis- 
ters, the insolence of its pretensions, the mountains of lies 
which it was teaching as sacred truths. Luther spoke ; 
and over half the Western world the Catholic Church 
collapsed, and a new theory and Christianity had to be 
constructed out of the fragments of it. 

There was left behind a fixed belief in God and in the 
Bible as His revealed word, in a future judgment, in the 
fall of man, in the atonement made for sin by the death 
of Christ, and in the new life which was made possible by 
His resurrection. The change was in the conception of 
the method by which the atonement was imagined to be 
efficacious. The material or sacramental view of it, though 
it lingered inconsistently in the mind even of Luther him- 
self, was substantially gone. New ideas adopted in en- 
thusiasm are necessarily extreme. The wrath of God was 
held to be inseparably and eternally attached to every act 
of sin, however infirm the sinner. That his nature could 
be changed, and that he could be mystically strengthened 
by incorporation with Christ's body in the Church, was 
contrary to experience, and was no longer credible. The 
conscience of every man, in the Church or out of it, told 
him that he was daily and hourly offending. God's law 
demanded a life of perfect obedience, eternal death being 
the penalty of the lightest breach of it. No human being 
was capable of such perfect obedience. He could not do 
one single act which would endure so strict a scrutiny. 
All mankind were thus included under sin. The Catholic 
Purgatory was swept away. It had degenerated into a 
contrivance for feeding the priests with money, and it im- 
plied that human nature could in itself be renovated by its 
own sufferings. Thus nothing lay before the whole race 
except everlasting reprobation. But the door of hope had 



22 BUNYAN. [chap. 

been opened on the cross of Christ. Christ had done 
what man could never do. He had fulfilled the law per- 
fectly. God was ready to accept Christ's perfect right- 
eousness as a substitute for the righteousness which man 
was required to present to him, but could not. The con- 
ditions of acceptance were no longer sacraments or out- 
ward acts, or lame and impotent efforts after a moral life, 
but faith in what Christ had done ; a complete self-abne- 
gation, a resigned consciousness of utter unworthiness, and 
an unreserved acceptance of the mercy held out through 
the Atonement. It might have been thought that since 
man was born so weak that it was impossible for him to 
do what the law required, consideration would be had for 
his infirmity ; that it was even dangerous to attribute to 
the Almighty a character so arbitrary as that He would 
exact an account from his creatures which the creature's 
necessary inadequacy rendered him incapable of meeting. 
But the impetuosity of the new theology would listen to 
no such excuses. God was infinitely pure, and nothing 
impure could stand in his sight. Man, so long as he rest- 
ed on merit of his own, must be for ever excluded from his 
presence. He must accept grace on the terms on which it 
was held out to him ; then, and then only, God would ex- 
tend his pity to him. He was no longer a child of wrath : 
he was God's child. His infirmities remained, but they 
were constantly obliterated by the merits of Christ. And 
he had strength given to him, partially, at least, to overcome 
temptation, under which, but for that strength, he would 
have fallen. Though nothing which he could do could 
deserve reward, yet he received grace in proportion to the 
firmness of his belief ; and his efforts after obedience, im- 
perfect though they might be, were accepted for Christ's 
sake. A good life, or a constant effort after a good life, 



ii.] CONVICTION OF SIN. 23 

was still the object which a man was bound to labour after. 
Though giving no claim to pardon, still less for reward, it 
was the necessary fruit of a sense of what Christ had done, 
and of love and gratitude towards him. Good works were 
the test of saving faith ; and if there were no signs of them, 
the faith was barren : it was not real faith at all. 

This was the Puritan belief in England in the seven- 
teenth century. The reason starts at it, but all religion is 
paradoxical to reason. God hates sin, yet sin exists. He 
is omnipotent, yet evil is not overcome. The will of man 
is free, or there can be no guilt ; yet the action of the will, 
so far as experience can throw light on its operation, is as 
much determined by antecedent causes as every other nat- 
ural force. Prayer is addressed to a Being assumed to be 
omniscient ; who knows better what is good for us than we 
can know ; who sees our thoughts without requiring to hear 
them in words ; whose will is fixed and cannot be changed. 
Prayer, therefore, in the eye of reason, is an impertinence. 
The Puritan theology is not more open to objection on 
the ground of unreasonableness than the Catholic theology, 
or any other which regards man as answerable to God for 
his conduct. We must judge of a creed by its effects on 
character, as we judge of the wholesomeness of food as it 
conduces to bodily health. And the creed which swept 
like a wave through England at that time, and recom- 
mended itself to the noblest and most powerful intellects, 
produced also in those who accepted it a horror of sin, 
an enthusiasm for justice, purity, and manliness, which can 
be paralleled only in the first age of Christianity. Cer- 
tainly there never was such a theory to take man's conceit 
out of him. He was a miserable wretch, so worthless at 
his best as to deserve everlasting perdition. If he was to 
be saved at all, he could be saved only by the unmerited 



24 BUNYAN. [chap. 

grace of God. In himself he was a child of the devil ; 
and hell, not in metaphor, but in hard and palpable fact, 
inevitably waited for him. This belief, or the affectation 
of this belief, continues to be professed, but without a real- 
isation of its tremendous meaning. The form of words is 
repeated by multitudes who do not care to think what they 
are saying. Who can measure the effect of such a con- 
viction upon men who were in earnest about their souls, 
who were assured that this account of their situation was 
actually true, and on whom, therefore, it bore with increas- 
ing weight in proportion to their sincerity ? 

With these few prefatory words, I now return to Bun- 
yan. He had begun to go regularly to church, and by 
church he meant the Church of England. The change in 
the constitution of it, even when it came, did not much al 
ter its practical character in the country districts. At El- 
stow, as we have seen, there was still a high place ; then 
was still a liturgy ; there was still a surplice. The Church 
of England is a compromise between the old theology and 
the new. The Bishops have the apostolical succession, but 
many of them disbelieve that they derive any virtue from 
it. The clergyman is either a priest who can absolve men 
from sins, or he is a minister, as in other Protestant com- 
munions. The sacraments are either means of grace or 
mere outward signs. A Christian is either saved by bap- 
tism or saved by faith, as he pleases to believe. In either 
case he may be a member of the Church of England. The 
effect of such uncertain utterances is to leave an impres- 
sion that, in defining such points closely, theologians are 
laying down lines of doctrines about subjects of which 
they know nothing, that the real truth of religion lies in 
what is common to the two theories, the obligation to lead 
a moral life ; and to this sensible view of their functions 



CONVICTION OF SIN. 25 

the ivslljops and clergy had, in fact, gradually arrived in the 
last century, when the revival of what is called earnestness, 
first in the form of Evangelicalism, and then of Anglo-Ca- 
tholicism, awoke again the old controversies. 

To a man of fervid temperament suddenly convinced 
of sin, incapable of being satisfied with ambiguous an- 
swers to questions which mean life or death to him, the 
Church of England has little to say. If he is quiet and 
reasonable, he finds in it all that he desires. Enthusiastic 
ages and enthusiastical temperaments demand something 
more complete and consistent. The clergy under the 
Long Parliament caught partially the tone of the prevail- 
ing spirit. The reading of the Book of Sports had been 
interdicted, and from their pulpits they lectured their con- 
gregations on the ungodliness of the* Sabbath amusements. 
But the congregations were slow to listen, and the sports 
went on. 

One Sunday morning, when Bunyan was at church with 
his wife, a sermon was delivered on this subject. It seem- 
ed to be especially addressed to himself, and it much af- 
fected him. He shook off the impression, and after din- 
ner he went as usual to the green. He was on the point 
of striking at a ball when the thought rushed across his 
mind, Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have 
thy sins and go to hell ? He looked up. The reflection 
of his own emotion was before him in visible form. He 
imagined that he saw Christ himself looking down at him 
from the sky. But he concluded that it was too late for 
him to repent. He was past pardon. He was sure to be 
damned, and he might as well be damned for many sins 
as f ;-r few. Sin, at all events, was pleasant, the only pleas- 
ant thing that he knew ; therefore he would take his fill of 
it. The sin was the game, and nothing but the game. He 



20 BUN VAN. [chap. 

continued to play, but the Puritan sensitiveness had taken 
hold of him. An artificial offence had become a real of- 
fence when his conscience was wounded by it. He was 
reckless and desperate. 

" " This temptation of the devil," he says, " is more usual 
among poor creatures than many are aware of. It contin- 
ued with me about a month or more ; but one day, as I 
was standing at a neighbour's shop-window, and there curs- 
ing and swearing after my wonted manner, there sat with- 
in the woman of the house and heard me, who, though she 
was a loose and ungodly wretch, protested that I swore 
and cursed at such a rate that she trembled to hear me. 
I was able to spoil all the youths in a whole town. At 
this reproof I was silenced and put to secret shame, and 
that too, as I thought, before the God of heaven. I stood 
hanging down my head, and wishing that I might be a 
little child, that my father might learn me to speak with- 
out this wicked sin of swearing ; for, thought I, I am so 
accustomed to it that it is vain to think of a reforms 
tion." 

These words have been sometimes taken as a reflection 
on Bunyan's own father, as if he had not sufficiently 
checked the first symptoms of a bad habit. If this was 
so, too much may be easily made of it. The language in 
the homes of ignorant workmen is seldom select. They 
have not a large vocabulary, and the words which they use 
do not mean what they seem to mean. But so sharp and 
sudden remorse speaks remarkably for Bunyan himself. 
At this time he could have been barely twenty years old, 
and already he was quick to see when he was doing 
v?rong, to be sorry for it, and to wish that he could do 
f f >e';ter. Vain the effort seemed to him, yet from that 
moment " he did leave off swearing, to his own great won- 



ii J CONVICTION OF SIN. 27 

der ;" and he found " that he could speak better and more 
pleasantly than he did before." 

It lies in the nature of human advance on the road of 
improvement, that* whatever be a man's occupation, be it 
handicraft, or art, or knowledge, or moral conquest of self, 
at each forward step which he takes he grows more con- 
scious of his shortcomings. It is thus with his whole ca- 
reer, and those who rise highest are least satisfied with 
themselves. Very simp!y Bunyan tells the story of his 
progress. On his outward history, on his business and 
his fortunes with it, he is totally silent. Worldly interests 
were not worth mentioning. He is solely occupied with 
his rescue from spiritual perdition. Soon after he had 
profited by the woman's rebuke, he fell in " with a poor 
man that made profession of religion and talked pleasant- 
ly of the Scriptures." Earnestness in such matters was 
growing common among English labourers. Under his 
new friend's example, Bunyan " betook him to the Bible, 
and began to take great pleasure in reading it," but espe- 
cially, as he admits frankly (and most people's experience 
will have been the same), " the historical part ; for as for 
St. Paul's Epistles and Scriptures of that nature, he could 
not away with them, being as yet ignorant of the corrup- 
tion of his nature, or of the want and worth of Jesus Christ 
to save him." 

Not as yet understanding these mysteries, he set him- 
self to reform his life. He became strict with himself in 
word and deed. " He set the Commandments before him 
for his way to heaven." "He thought if he could but 
keep them pretty well he should have comfort." If now 
and then he broke one of them, he suffered in conscience; 
he repented of his fault ; he made good resolutions for the 
future, and struggled to carry them out. " His neighbours 
C 2* 



28 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

took him to be a new man, and marvelled at the alteration." 
Pleasure of any kind, even the most innocent, he consid- 
ered to be a snare to him, and he abandoned it. He had 
been fond of dancing, but he gave it up. Music and sing- 
ing he parted with, though it distressed him to leave them. 
Of all amusements, that in which he had most delighted 
had been in ringing the bells in Elstow church tower. 
With his bells he could not part all at once, lie would 
no longer ring himself : but when his friends were enjoy- 
ing themselves with the ropes, he could not help going 
now and then to the tower door to look on and listen ; 
but he feared at last that the steeple might fall upon him 
and kill him. We call such scruples in these days exag- 
gerated and fantastic. We are no longer in danger our- 
selves of suffering from similar emotions. Whether we 
are the better for having got rid of them will be seen in 
the future history of our race. 

Notwithstanding his struggles and his sacrifices, Bunyan 
found that they did not bring him the peace which he ex- 
pected. A man can change his outward conduct; but if 
he is in earnest, he comes in sight of other features in him- 
self which he cannot change so easily — the meannesses, the 
paltrinesses, the selfishnesses which haunt him in spite of 
himself, which start out upon him at moments the most 
unlooked for, which taint the best of his actions and make 
him loathe and hate himself. Bunyan's life was now, for 
so young a person, a model of correctness ; but he had no 
sooner brought his actions straight than he discovered that 
he was admiring and approving of himself. No situation 
is more humiliating, none brings with it a feeling of more 
entire hopelessness. "All this while," he says, " I knew 
not Christ, nor grace, nor faith, nor hope ; and had I then 
died, my state had been most fearful. I was but a poor 



ii.] CONVICTION OF SIN. 29 

painted hypocrite, going about to establish my own right- 
eousness." 

Like his own Pilgrim, he had the burden on his back of 
his conscious unworthiness. How was he to be rid of it? 

" One day, in a street in Bedford, as he was at work 
in his calling, he fell in with three or four poor women sit- 
ting at a door in the sun talking about the things of God." 
He was himself at that time " a brisk talker " about the 
matters of religion, and he joined these women. Their ex- 
pressions were wholly unintelligible to him. "They were 
speaking of the wretchedness of their own hearts, of their 
unbelief, of their miserable state. They did contemn, 
slight, and abhor their own righteousness as filthy and in- 
sufficient to do them any good. They spoke of a new 
birth and of the work of God in their hearts, which com- 
forted and strengthened them against the temptations of 
the devil." 

The language of the poor women has lost its old mean- 
ing. They themselves, if they were alive, would not use 
it any longer. The conventional phrases of Evangelical 
Christianity ring untrue in a modern ear like a cracked 
bell. We have grown so accustomed to them as a cant, 
that we can hardly believe that they ever stood for sincere 
convictions. Yet these forms were once alive with the 
profoundest of all moral truths — a truth not of a narrow 
theology, but which lies at the very bottom of the well, at 
the fountain-head of human morality ; namely, that a man 
who would work out his salvation must cast out self, 
though he rend his heart-strings in doing it ; not love of 
self-indulgence only, but self-applause, self-confidence, self- 
conceit and vanity, desire or expectation of reward ; self 
in all the subtle ingenuities with which it winds about the 
soul. In one dialect or another, he must recognize that 



30 BUNYAN. [chap. 

he is himself a poor creature not worth thinking of, or he 
will not take the first step towards excellence in any single 
thing which he undertakes. 

Bunyan left the women and went about his work, but 
their talk went with him. " He was greatly affected." 
" He saw that he wanted the true tokens of a godly man." 
He sought them out, and spoke with them again and 
again. He could not stay away ; and the more he went, 
the more he questioned his condition. 

" I found two things," he says, " at which I did some- 
times marvel, considering what a blind, ungodly wretch 
but just before I was ; one, a great softness and tenderness 
of heart, which caused me to fall under the conviction of 
what, by Scripture, they asserted ; the other, a great bend- 
ing of my mind, to a continual meditating on it. My mind 
was now like a horse-leech at the vein, still crying, Give, 
give ; so fixed on eternity and on the kingdom of heaven 
(though I knew but little), that neither pleasure, nor profit, 
nor persuasion, nor threats could loosen it or make it let 
go its hold. It is in very deed a certain truth ; it would 
have been then as difficult for me to have taken my mind 
from heaven to earth, as I have found it often since to get 
it from earth to heaven." 

Ordinary persons who are conscious of trying to do 
right, who resist temptations, are sorry when they slip, 
and determine to be more on their guard for the future, 
are well contented with the condition which they have 
reached. They are respectable ; they are right-minded in 
common things ; they fulfil their every-day duties to their 
families and to society with a sufficiency for which the 
world speaks well of them, as indeed it ought to speak; 
and they themselves acquiesce in the world's verdict. Any 
passionate agitation about the state of their souls they 



it] CONVICTION OF SIN. 31 

consider unreal and affected. Such men may be amiable 
in private life, good neighbours, and useful citizens ; but 
be their talents what they may, they could not write a 
Pilgrim's Progress, or ever reach the Delectable Moun- 
tains, or even be conscious that such mountains exist. 

Bunyan was on the threshold of the higher life. He 
knew that he was a very poor creature. He longed to 
rise to something better. He was a mere ignorant, un- 
taught mechanic. He had not been to school with Aris- 
totle and Plato. He could not help himself, or lose him- 
self in the speculations of poets and philosophers. He 
had only the Bible, and, studying the Bible, he found that 
the wonder working power in man's nature was Faith. 
Faith! What was it? What did it mean? Had he faith? 
He was but "a poor sot," and yet he thought that he 
could not be wholly without it. The Bible told him 
that if he had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, he could 
work miracles. He did not understand Oriental meta- 
phors ; here was a simple test which could be at once ap- 
plied. 

" One day," he writes, " as I was between Elstow and 
Bedford, the temptation was hot upon me to try if I had 
faith by doing some miracle. I must say to the puddles 
that were in the horse-pads, " be dry," and truly at one 
time I was agoing to say so indeed. But just as I was 
about to speak, the thought came into my mind: Go un- 
der yonder hedge first and pray that God would make you 
able. But when I had concluded to pray, this came hot 
upon me, that if I prayed and came again and tried to do 
it, and yet did nothing notwithstanding, then be sure I 
had no faith, but was a castaway, and lost. Nay, thought 
I, if it be so, I will never try it yet, but will stay a little 
longer. Thus was I tossed between the devil and my 



32 BUNYAN. [chap. 

own ignorance, and so perplexed at some times that I 
could not tell what to do." 

Common-sense will call this disease, and will think im- 
patiently that the young tinker would have done better 
to attend to his business. But it must be observed that 
Bunyan was attending to his business, toiling all the while 
with grimed hands over his pots and kettles. No one 
ever complained that the pots and kettles were ill-mended. 
It was merely that, being simple-minded, he found in his 
Bible that, besides earning his bread, he had to save or 
lose his soul. Having no other guide, he took its words 
literally, and the directions puzzled him. 

He grew more and more unhappy, more lowly in his 
own eyes — 

" Wishing him like to those more rich in hope "— 

like the women who were so far beyond him on the heav- 
enly road. He was a poet without knowing it, and his 
gifts only served to perplex him further. His speculations 
assumed bodily forms which he supposed to be actual vi- 
sions. He saw his poor friends sitting on the sunny side 
of a high mountain refreshing themselves in the warmth, 
while he was shivering in frost, and snow, and mist. The 
mountain was surrounded by a wall, through which he 
tried to pass, and searched long in vain for an opening 
through it. At last he found one, very straight and nar- 
row, through which he struggled, after desperate efforts. 
" It showed him," he said, " that none could enter into life 
but those who were in downright earnest, and unless they 
left the wicked world behind them; for here was only 
room for body and soul, but not for body and soul and 
sin." The vision brought him no comfort, for it passed 
away, and left him still on the wrong side : a little com- 



ii.] CONVICTION OF SIN. 33 

fortable self-conceit would have set him at rest. But, like 
all real men, Bunyan had the worst opinion of himself. 
He looked at his Bible again. He found that he must 
be elected. Was he elected? He could as little tell as 
whether he had faith. He knew that he longed to be 
elected, but " the Scripture trampled on his desire ;" for it 
said, " It is not of him that willeth, or of him that run- 
neth, but of God that sheweth mercy ;" therefore, unless 
God had chosen him, his labour was in vain. The devil 
saw his opportunity ; the devil, among his other attributes, 
must have possessed that of omnipresence; for whenever 
any human soul was in straits, he was personally at hand 
to take advantage of it. 

" It may be that you are not elected," the tempter said 
to Bunyan. " It may be so indeed,'' thought he. " Why, 
then," said Satan, " you had as good leave off and strive 
no farther ; for if, indeed, you should not be elected and 
chosen of God, there is no talk of your being saved." 

A comforting text suggested itself. " Look at the gen- 
erations of old ; did any ever trust in the Lord and was 
confounded ?" But these exact words, unfortunately, were 
only to be found in the Apocrypha. And there was a 
further distressing possibility, which has occurred to others 
besides Bunyan. Perhaps the day of grace was passed. 
It came on him one day as he walked in the country that 
perhaps those good people in Bedford were all that the 
Lord would save in those parts, and that he came too late 
for the blessing. True, Christ had said, " Compel them 
to come in, for yet there is room." It might be " that 
when Christ spoke those words," He was thinking of him 
— him among the rest that he had chosen, and had mean/ - 
to encourage him. But Bunyan was too simply modest 
to gather comfort from such aspiring thoughts. He de- 



34 BUNYAN. . [chap. n. 

sired to be converted, craved for it, longed for it with all 
his heart and soul. " Could it have been gotten for gold," 
he said, " what would I not have given for it ! Had I had 
a whole world it had all gone ten thousand times over for 
this, that my soul might have been in a converted state. 
But, oh ! I was made sick by that saying of Christ : ' He 
called to Him whom He would, and they came to Him.' 
I feared He would not call me." 

Election, conversion, day of grace, coming to Christ, 
have been pawed and fingered by unctuous hands for now 
two hundred years. The bloom is gone from the flower. 
The plumage, once shining with hues direct from heaven, 
is soiled and bedraggled. The most solemn of all realities 
have been degraded into the passwords of technical the- 
ology. In Bunyan's day, in camp and council chamber, 
in High Courts of Parliament, and among the poor drudges 
in English villages, they were still radiant with spiritual 
meaning. The dialect may alter ; but if man is more than 
a brief floating bubble on the eternal river of time; if 
there be really an immortal part of him which need not 
perish ; and if his business on earth is to save it from per- 
ishing — he will still try to pierce the mountain barrier; 
he will still find the work as hard as Bunyan found it. 
We live in days of progress and enlightenment; nature on 
a hundred sides has unlocked her storehouses of knowl- 
edge. But she has furnished no " open sesame " to bid the 
mountain gate fly wide which leads to conquest of self. 
There is still no passage there for " body and soul and sin." 



CHAPTER III. 



The women in Bedford, to whom Bunyan had opened his 
mind, had been naturally interested in him. Young and 
rough as he was, he could not have failed to impress any- 
one who conversed with him with a sense that he was a 
remarkable person. They mentioned him to Mr. Grfford, 
the minister of the Baptist Church at Bedford. John 
Gilford had, at the beginning of the Civil War, been a 
loose young officer in the king's army. He had been 
taken prisoner when engaged in some exploit which was 
contrary to the usages of war. A court-martial had sen- 
tenced him to death, and he was to have been shot in a 
few hours, when he broke out of his prison with his sis- 
ter's help, and, after various adventures, settled at Bedford 
as a doctor. The near escape had not sobered him. He 
led a disorderly life, drinking and gambling, till the loss 
of a large sum of money startled him into seriousness. 
In the language of the time, he became convinced of sin, 
and joined the Baptists, the most thorough-going and con- 
sistent of all the Protestant sects. If the Sacrament of 
Baptism is not a magical form, but is a personal act, in 
which the baptised person devotes himself to Christ's ser- 
vice, to baptise children at an age when they cannot under- 
stand what they are doing may well seem irrational and 
even impious. 



36 BUNYAN. [chap. 

Gifford, who was now the head of the Baptist commu- 
nity in the town, invited Bunyan to his house, and ex- 
plained the causes of his distress to him. He was a lost 
sinner. It was true that he had parted with his old faults, 
and was leading a new life. But his heart was unchanged ; 
his past offences stood in record against him. He was 
still under the wrath of God, miserable in his position, and 
therefore miserable in mind. He must become sensible 
of his lost state, and lay hold of the only remedy, or there 
was no hope for him. 

There was no difficulty in convincing Bunyan that he 
was in a bad way. He was too well aware of it already. 
In a work of fiction, the conviction would be followed im- 
mediately by consoling grace. In the actual experience 
of a living human soul, the medicine operates less pleas- 
antly. 

" I began," he says, " to see something of the vanity 
and inward wretchedness of my wicked heart, for as yet 
I knew no great matter therein. But now it began to be 
discovered unto me, and to work for wickedness as it never 
did before. Lusts and corruptions would strongly put 
themselves forth within me in wicked thoughts and de- 
sires which I did not regard before. Whereas, before, my 
soul was full of longing after God ; now my heart began 
to hanker after every foolish vanity." 

Constitutions differ. Mr. Gifford's treatment, if it was 
ever good for any man, was too sharp for Bunyan. The 
fierce acid which had been poured into his wounds set them 
all festering again. He frankly admits that he was now 
farther from conversion than before. His heart, do what 
he would, refused to leave off desiring forbidden pleasures, 
and while this continued, he supposed that he was still 
under the law, and must perish by it. He compared him- 



in.] "GRACE ABOUNDING." 37 

self to the child who, as he was being brought to Christ, 
was thrown down by the devil and wallowed foaming. A 
less healthy nature might have been destroyed by these 
artificially created and exaggerated miseries. He sup- 
posed he was given over to unbelief and wickedness, and 
yet he relates, with touching simplicity : — 

" As to the act of sinning I was never more tender than 
now. I durst not take up a pin or a stick, though but so 
big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would 
smart at every touch. I could not tell how to speak my 
words for fear I should misplace them." 

But the care with which he watched his conduct availed 
him nothing. He was on a morass " that shook if he did 
but stir," and he was " there left both of God, and Christ, 
and the Spirit, and of all good things." Behind him lay 
the faults of his childhood and youth, every one of which 
he believed to be recorded against him. Within were 
his disobedient inclinations, which he conceived to be the 
presence of the devil in his heart. If he was to be pre- 
sented clean of stain before God he must have a perfect 
righteousness, which was to be found only in Christ, and 
Christ had rejected him. " My original and inward pollu- 
tion," he writes, " was my plague and my affliction. I was 
more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad, and I 
thought I was so in God's eyes too. I thought every one 
had a better heart than I had. I could have changed heart 
with anybody. I thought none but the devil himself 
could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution. 
Sure, thought I, I am given up to the devil and to a rep- 
robate mind ; and thus I continued for a long while, even 
for some years together." 

And all the while the world went on so quietly ; these 
things over which Bunyan was so miserable not seeming 



38 BUNYAN. [chap. 

to trouble anyone except himself ; and as if they had no 
existence except on Sundays and in pious talk. Old peo- 
ple were hunting after the treasures of this life, as if they 
were never to leave the earth. Professors of religion 
complained when they lost fortune or health ; what were 
fortune and health to the awful possibilities which lay 
beyond the grave? To Bunyan the future life of Chris- 
tianity was a reality as certain as the next day's sunrise ; 
and he could have been happy on bread and water if he 
could have felt himself prepared to enter it. Every cre- 
ated being seemed better off than he was. He was sorry 
that God had made him a man. He " blessed the condi- 
tion of the birds, beasts, and fishes, for they had not a 
sinful nature. They were not obnoxious to the wrath of 
God; they were not to go to hell-fire after death." He 
recalled the texts which spoke of Christ and forgiveness. 
He tried to persuade himself that Christ cared for him. 
He could have talked of Christ's love and mercy " even to 
the very crows which sat on the ploughed land before 
him." But he was too sincere to satisfy himself with 
formulas and phrases. He could not, he would not, pro- 
fess to be convinced that things would go well with him 
when he was not convinced. Cold spasms of doubt laid 
hold of him — doubts, not so much of his own salvation, 
as of the truth of all that he had been taught to believe ; 
and the problem had to be fought and grappled with, 
which lies in the intellectual nature of every genuine man, 
whether he be an iEschylus or a Shakspeare, or a poor 
working Bedfordshire mechanic. No honest soul can 
look out upon the world and see it as it really is, without 
the question rising in him whether there be any God that 
governs it at all. No one can accept the popular notion 
of heaven and hell as actually true, without being as ter- 



in.] -GRACE ABOUNDING. 1 ' 39 

rifled as Bunyan was. We go on as we do, and attend to 
our business and enjoy ourselves, because the words have 
no real meaning to us. Providence in its kindness leaves 
most of us unblessed or uncursed with natures of too fine 
a fibre. 

Bunyan was hardly dealt with. " Whole floods of blas- 
phemies," he says, " against God, Christ, and the Script- 
ures were poured upon my spirit; questions against the 
very being of God and of his only beloved Son, as whether 
there was in truth a God or Christ, or no, and whether the 
Holy Scriptures were not rather a fable and cunning story 
than the holy and pure Word of God." 

"How can you tell," the tempter whispered, "but that 
the Turks have as good a Scripture to prove their Ma- 
homet the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus is ? 
Could I think that so many tens of thousands, in so many 
countries and kingdoms, should be without the knowledge 
of the right way to heaven, if there were indeed a heaven, 
and that we who lie in a corner of the earth should alone 
be blessed therewith? Every one doth think his own re- 
ligion the rightcst — both Jews, Moors, and Pagans ; and 
how if all our faith, and Christ, and Scripture should be 
but 'a think so 'too?" St. Paul spoke positively. Bun- 
yan saw shrewdly that on St. Paul the weight of the whole 
Christian theory really rested. But " how could he tell 
but that St. Paul, being a subtle and cunning man, might 
give himself up to deceive with strong delusions?" "He 
was carried away by such thoughts as by a whirlwind." 

His belief in the active agency of the devil in human 
affairs, of which he supposed that he had witnessed in- 
stances, was no doubt a great help to him. If he could 
have imagined that his doubts or misgivings had been sug- 
gested by a desire for truth, they would have been harder 



40 BUN VAN. [chap. 

to bear. More than ever he was convinced that he was 
possessed by the devil. He " compared himself to a child 
carried off by a gipsy." " Kick sometimes I did," he says, 
" and scream, and cry, but yet I was as bound in the 
wings of temptation, and the wind would bear me away." 
" I blessed the dog and toad, and counted the condition 
of everything that God had made far better than this 
dreadful state of mine. The dog or horse had no soul to 
perish under the everlasting weight of hell for sin, as mine 
was like to do." 

Doubts about revelation and the truth of Scripture were 
more easy to encounter then than they are at present. 
Bunyan was protected by want of learning, and by a 
powerful predisposition to find the objections against the 
credibility of the Gospel history to be groundless. Crit- 
ical investigation had not as yet analysed the historical 
construction of the sacred books ; and scepticism, as he saw 
it in people round him, did actually come from the devil ; 
that is, from a desire to escape the moral restraints of re- 
ligion. The wisest, noblest, best instructed men in Eng- 
land at that time regarded the Bible as an authentic com- 
munication from God, and as the only foundation for law 
and civil society. The masculine sense and strong, modest 
intellect of Bunyan ensured his acquiescence in an opin- 
ion so powerfully supported. Fits of uncertainty recur- 
red even to the end of his life; it must be so with men 
who are honestly in earnest ; but his doubts were of course 
only intermittent, and his judgment was in the main sat- 
isfied that the Bible was, as he had been taught, the Word 
of God. This, however, helped him little ; for in the 
Bible he read his own condemnation. The weight which 
pressed him down was the sense of his unworthiness. 
What was he that God should care for him ? He fancied 



in.] "GRACE ABOUNDING;' 41 

that he heard God saying to the angels, "This poor, 
simple wretch doth hanker after me, as if I had nothing 
to do with my mercy but to bestow it on such as he. 
Poor fool, how art thou deceived ! It is not for such as 
thee to have favour with the Highest." 

Miserable as he was, he clung to his misery as the one 
link which connected him with the object of his longings. 
If he had no hope of heaven, he was at least distracted 
that he must lose it. He was afraid of dying, yet he was 
still more afraid of continuing to live ; lest the impression 
should wear away through time, and occupation and other 
interests should turn his heart away to the world, and thus 
his wounds might cease to pain him. 

Readers of the " Pilgrim's Progress " sometimes ask 
with wonder, why, after Christian had been received into 
the narrow gate, and had been set forward upon his way, 
so many trials and dangers still lay before him. The an- 
swer is simply that Christian was a pilgrim, that the jour- 
ney of life still lay before him, and at every step temp- 
tations would meet him in new, unexpected shapes. St. 
Anthony in his hermitage was beset by as many fiends as 
had ever troubled him when in the world. Man's spirit- 
ual existence is like the flight of a bird in the air; he is 
sustained only by effort, and when he ceases to exert him- 
self he falls. There are intervals, however, of comparative 
calm, and to one of these the storm-tossed Bunyan was 
now approaching. He had passed through the Slough of 
Despond. He had gone astray after Mr. Legality, and the 
rocks had almost overwhelmed him. Evangelist now found 
him and put him right again, and he was to be allowed 
a breathing space at the Interpreter's house. As he was 
at his ordinary daily work, his mind was restlessly busy. 
Verses of Scripture came into his head, sweet while pres- 



42 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

ent, but, like Peter's sheet, caught up again into heaven. 
We may have heard all our lives of Christ. Words and 
ideas with which we have been familiar from childhood 
are trodden into paths as barren as sand. Suddenly, we 
know not how, the meaning flashes upon us. The seed 
has found its way into some corner of our minds where 
it can germinate. The shell breaks, the cotyledons open, 
and the plant of faith is alive. So it was now to be with 
Bunyan. 

" One day," he says, " as I was travelling into the coun- 
try, musing on the wickedness of my heart, and consider- 
ing the enmity that was in me to God, the Scripture came 
into my mind, 'He hath made peace through the blood of 
His cross.' I saw that the justice of God and my sinful 
soul could embrace and kiss each other. I was ready to 
swoon, not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and 
peace." Everything became clear : the Gospel history, the 
birth, the life, the death of the Saviour ; how gently he 
gave himself to be nailed on the cross for his (Bunyan's) 
sins. " I saw Him in the spirit," he goes on, " a Man on 
the right hand of the Father, pleading for me, and have 
seen the manner of His coming from heaven to judge the 
world with glory." 

The sense of guilt which had so oppressed him was now 
a key to the mystery. " God," he says, " suffered me to 
be afflicted with temptations concerning these things, and 
then revealed them to me." He was crushed to the ground 
by the thought of his wickedness ; " the Lord showed him 
the death of Christ, and lifted the weight away." 

Now he thought he had a personal evidence from heav- 
en that he was really saved. Before this, he had lain 
trembling at the mouth of hell ; now he was so far away 
from it that he could scarce tell where it was. He fell in 



in.] "GRACE ABOUNDING." 43 

at this time with a copy of Luther's commentary on the 
Epistle to the Galatians, " so old that it was like to fall to 
pieces." Bunyan found in it the exact counterpart of his 
own experience : " of all the books that he had ever met 
with, it seemed to him the most fit for a wounded con- 
science." 

Everything was supernatural with him : when a bad 
thought came into his mind, it was the devil that put it 
there. These breathings of peace he regarded as the im- 
mediate voice of his Saviour. Alas ! the respite was but 
short. He had hoped that his troubles were over, when 
the tempter came back upon him in the most extraordi- 
nary form which he had yet assumed. Bunyan had him- 
self left the door open ; the evil spirits could only enter 
" Mansoul " through the owner's negligence, but once in, 
they could work their own wicked will. How it happened 
will be told afterwards. The temptation itself must be 
described first. Never was a nature more perversely in- 
genious in torturing itself. 

He had gained Christ, as he called it. He was now 
tempted " to sell and part with this most blessed Christ, to 
exchange Him for the things of this life — for anything." 
If there had been any real prospect of worldly advantage 
before Bunyan, which he could have gained by abandoning 
his religious profession, the words w r ould have had a mean- 
ing ; but there is no hint or trace of any prospect of the 
kind ; nor in Bunyan's position could there have been, 
The temptation, as he called it, was a freak of fancy : fan- 
cy resenting the minuteness with which he watched his 
own emotions. And yet he says, " It lay upon me for a 
year, and did follow me so continually that I was not rid 
of it one day in a month, sometimes not an hour in many 
days together, unless when I was asleep. I could neither 
D 3 



44 BUNYAN. [chap. 

eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast my eye 
to look on this or that, but still the temptation would 
come, ' Sell Christ for this, sell Him for that ! Sell Him ! 
Sell Him !' " 

He had been haunted before with a notion that he was 
under a spell ; that he had been fated to commit the un- 
pardonable sin ; and he was now thinking of Judas, who 
had been admitted to Christ's intimacy, and had then 
betrayed him. Here it was before him — the very thing 
which he had so long dreaded. If his heart did but con- 
sent for a moment, the deed was done. His doom had 
overtaken him. He wrestled with the thought as it rose, 
thrust it from him " with his hands and elbows," body and 
mind convulsed together in a common agony. As fast as 
the destroyer said, " Sell Him," Bunyan said, " I will not ; 
I will not ; I will not ; not for thousands, thousands, thou- 
sands of worlds I" One morning, as he lay in his bed, the 
voice came again, and would not be driven away. Bunyan 
fought against it till he was out of breath. He fell back 
exhausted, and, without conscious action of his will, the 
fatal sentence passed through his brain, " Let Him go if 
He will." 

That the " selling Christ " was a bargain in which he 
was to lose all and receive nothing is evident from the 
form in which he was overcome. Yet, if he had gained a 
fortune by fraud or forgery, he could not have been more 
certain that he had destroyed himself. 

Satan had won the battle, and he, " as a bird shot from 
a tree, had fallen into guilt and despair." He got out of 
bed, "and went moping into the fields," where he wander- 
ed for two hours, " as a man bereft of life, and now past 
recovering," " bound over to eternal punishment." He 
shrank under the hedges, " in guilt and sorrow, bemoan- 



in.] "GRACE ABOUNDING." 45 

ing the hardness of his fate." In vain the words now 
came back that had so comforted him, "The blood of 
Christ cleanseth from all sin." They had no application 
to him. He had acquired his birthright, but, like Esau, 
he had sold it, and could not any more find place for re- 
pentance. True, it was said that *' all manner of sins and 
blasphemies should be forgiven unto men," but only such 
sins and blasphemies as had been committed in the natural 
state. Bunyan had received grace, and, after receiving it, 
had sinned against the Holy Ghost. 

It w 7 as done, and nothing could undo it. David had 
received grace, and had committed murder and adultery 
after it. But murder and adultery, bad as they might 
be, were only transgressions of the law of Moses. Bunyan 
had sinned against the Mediator himself; "he had sold his 
Saviour." One sin, and only one, there was which could 
not be pardoned, and he had been guilty of it. Peter had 
sinned against grace, and even after he had been warned. 
Peter, however, had but denied his Master. Bunyan had 
sold him. He was no David or Peter, he was Judas. It 
was very hard. Others naturally as bad as he had been 
saved. Why had he been picked out to be made a Son 
of Perdition ? A Judas ! Was there any point in which 
he was better than Judas? Judas had sinned with delib- 
erate purpose : he " in a fearful hurry," and " against 
prayer and striving." But there might be more ways 
than one of committing the unpardonable sin, and there 
might be degrees of it. It was a dreadful condition. The 
old doubts came back. 

" I was now ashamed," he says, " that I should be like 
such an ugly man as Judas. I thought how loathsome I 
should be to all the saints at the Day of Judgment. I 
was tempted to content myself by receiving some false 



46 BUNYAN. [chap. 

opinion, as that there should be no such thing as the Day 
of Judgment, that we should not rise again, that sin was no 
such grievous thing, the tempter suggesting that if these 
things should be indeed true, yet to believe otherwise would 
yield me ease for the present. If I must perish, I need 
not torment myself beforehand." 

Judas ! Judas ! was now for ever before his eyes. So 
identified he was with Judas that he felt at times as if his 
breastbone was bursting. A mark like Cain's was on him. 
In vain he searched again through the catalogue of par- 
doned sinners. Manasseh had consulted wizards and fa- 
miliar spirits. Manasseh had burnt his children in the fire 
to devils. He had found mercy ; but, alas ! Manasseh's 
sins had nothing of the nature of selling the Saviour. To 
have sold the Saviour " was a sin bigger than the sins of 
a country, of a kingdom, or of the whole world — not all 
of them together could equal it." 

His brain was overstrained, it will be said. Very likely. 
It is to be remembered, however, who and what he was, 
and that he had overstrained it in his eagerness to learn 
what he conceived his Maker to wish him to be — a form 
of anxiety not common in this world. The cure was as 
remarkable as the disorder. One day he was " in a good 
man's shop," still " afflicting himself with self-abhorrence," 
when something seemed to rush in through an open win- 
dow, and he heard a voice saying, " Didst ever refuse to 
be justified by the blood of Christ ?" Bunyan shared the 
belief of his time. He took the system of things as the 
Bible represented it ; but his strong common sense put 
him on his guard against being easily credulous. He 
thought at the time that the voice was supernatural. Af- 
ter twenty years ho said, modestly, that he " could not make 
a judgment of it," The effect, any way, was as if an an- 



in.] "GRACE ABOUNDING." 47 

gel had come to him and had told him that there was still 
hope. Hapless as his condition was, he might still pray 
for mercy, and might possibly find it. He tried to pray, 
and found it very hard. The devil whispered again that 
God was tired of him ; God wanted to be rid of him and 
his importunities, and had, therefore, allowed him to com- 
mit this particular sin that he might hear no more of him. 
He remembered Esau, and thought that this might be 
too true: "the saying about Esau was a naming sword 
barring the way of the tree of life to him." Still he would 
not give in. " I can but die," he said to himself ; " and if 
it must be so, it shall be said that such an one died at the 
feet of Christ in prayer." 

He was torturing himself with illusions. Most of the 
saints in the Catholic Calendar have done the same. The 
most remorseless philosopher can hardly refuse a certain 
admiration for this poor uneducated village lad struggling 
so bravely in the theological spider's web. The " Profess- 
ors " could not comfort him, having never experienced 
similar distresses in their own persons. He consulted " an 
Antient Christian," telling him that he feared that he had 
sinned against the Holy Ghost. The Antient Christian 
answered gravely that he thought so too. The devil hav- 
ing him at advantage, began to be witty with him. The 
devil suggested that, as he had offended the second or 
third Person of the Trinity, he had better pray the Father 
to mediate for him with Christ and the Holy Spirit. Then 
the devil took another turn. Christ, he said, was really 
sorry for Bunyan, but his case was beyond remedy. Bun- 
yan's sin was so peculiar, that it was not of the nature of 
those for which He had bled and died, and had not, there- 
fore, been laid to His charge. To justify Bunyan he must 
come down and die again, and that was not to be thought 



48 BUNYAN. [cqap. 

of. "Oh!" exclaimed the unfortunate victim, "the un- 
thought-of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors that are 
effected by a thorough application of guilt (to a spirit) 
that is yielded to desperation. This is the man that hath 
his dwelling among the tombs." 

Sitting in this humour on a settle in the street at Bed- 
ford, he was pondering over his fearful state. The sun in 
heaven seemed to grudge its light to him. " The stones 
in the street and the tiles on the houses did bend them- 
selves against him." Each crisis in Bunyan's mind is al- 
ways framed in the picture of some spot where it occurred. 
He was crying, "in the bitterness of his soul, How can 
God comfort such a wretch as I am ?" As before, in the 
shop, a voice came in answer, "This sin is not unto death." 
The first voice had brought him hope, which was almost 
extinguished ; the second was a message of life. The 
night was gone, and it was daylight. He had come to the 
end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the spec- 
tres and the hobgoblins which had jibbered at him sud- 
denly all vanished. A moment before he had supposed 
that he was out of reach of pardon — that he had no right 
to pray, no right to repent, or, at least, that neither prayer 
nor repentance could profit him. If his sin was not to 
death, then he was on the same ground as other sinners. 
If they might pray, he might pray, and might look to be 
forgiven on the same terms. He still saw that his " sell- 
ing Christ" had been "most barbarous," but despair was 
followed by an extravagance, no less unbounded, of grati- 
tude, when he felt that Christ would pardon even this. 

" Love and affection for Christ," he says, " did work at 
this time such a strong and hot desire of revengement 
upon myself for the abuse I had done to Him, that, to 
speak as then I thought, had I had a thousand gallons of 



in.] "GRACE ABOUNDING." 49 

blood in my veins, I could freely have spilt it all at the 
command of my Lord and Saviour. The tempter told me 
it was vain to pray. Yet, thought I, I will pray. But, 
said the tempter, your sin is unpardonable. Well, said 
I, I will pray. It is no boot, said he. Yet, said I, I will 
pray ; so I went to prayer, and I uttered words to this 
effect: Lord, Satan tells me that neither Thy mercy nor 
Christ's blood is sufficient to save my soul. Lord, shall I 
honour Thee most by believing that Thou wilt and canst, 
or him, by believing that Thou neither wilt nor canst ? 
Lord, I would fain honour Thee by believing that Thou 
wilt and canst. As I was there before the Lord, the 
Scripture came, Oh ! man, great is thy faith, even as if 
one had clapped me on the back." 

The waves had not wholly subsided ; but we need not 
follow the undulations any farther. It is enough that af- 
ter a " conviction of sin," considerably deeper than most 
people find necessary for themselves, Bunyan had come 
to realize what was meant by salvation in Christ, accord- 
ing to the received creed of the contemporary Protestant 
world. The intensity of his emotions arose only from the 
completeness with which he believed it. Man had sinned, 
and by sin was made a servant of the devil. His redemp- 
tion was a personal act of the Saviour towards each indi- 
vidual sinner. In the Atonement Christ had before him 
each separate person whom he designed to save, blotting 
out his offences, however heinous they might be, and re- 
cording in place of them his own perfect obedience. Each 
reconciled sinner in return regarded Christ's sufferino-s as 
undergone immediately for himself, and gratitude for that 
great deliverance enabled and obliged him to devote his 
strength and soul thenceforward to God's service. In the 
seventeenth century, all earnest English Protestants held 



60 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

this belief. In the nineteenth century, most of us repeat 
the phrases of this belief, and pretend to hold it. We 
think we hold it. We are growing more cautious, per- 
haps, with our definitions. We suspect that there may be 
mysteries in God's nature and methods which we cannot 
fully explain. The outlines of "the scheme of salvation" 
are growing indistinct ; and we see it through a gathering 
mist. Yet the essence of it will remain true, whether we 
recognise it or not. While man remains man he will do 
things which he ought not to do. He will leave undone 
things which he ought to do. To will, may be present 
with hi in ; but how to perform what he wills, he will nev- 
er fully know, and he will still hate "the body of death" 
which he feels clinging to him. He will try to do better. 
When he falls, he will struggle to his feet again. He will 
climb and climb on the hill-side, though he never reaches 
the top, and knows that he can never reach it. His life 
will be a failure, which he will not dare to offer as a fit 
account of himself, or as worth a serious regard. Yet he 
will still hope that he will not be wholly cast away when, 
after his sleep in death, he wakes again. 

Now, says Bunyan, there remained only the hinder part 
of the tempest. Heavenly voices continued to encourage 
him. " As I was passing in the field," he goes on, " I 
heard the sentence, thy righteousness is in heaven ; and 
methought I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ 
at God's right hand, there I say, as my righteousness, so 
that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could 
not say of me He wants my righteousness, for that was 
just before Him. Now did my chains fall off my legs in- 
deed. I was loosed from my affliction and irons; my 
temptations also fled away, so that from that time those 
dreadful Scriptures of God left off to trouble me. Now 



in.] "GRACE ABOUNDING." 51 

went I home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. 
Christ of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, 
and sanctification and redemption. I now lived very 
sweetly at peace with God through Christ. Oh ! me- 
th ought, Christ! Christ! There was nothing but Christ 
before my eyes. I was not now only looting upon this 
and the other benefits of Christ apart, as of His blood, 
burial, and resurrection, but considered Him as a whole 
Christ. All those graces that were now green in me were 
yet but like those cracked groats and fourpence half-pen- 
nies which rich men carry in their purses, while their gold 
is in their trunks at home. Oh ! I saw my gold was in 
my trunk at home in Christ my Lord and Saviour. The 
Lord led me into the mystery of union with the Son of 
God, that I was joined to Him, that I was flesh of His 
flesh. If He and I were one, His righteousness was mine, 
His merits mine, His victory mine. Now I could see my- 
self in heaven and earth at once ; in heaven by my Christ, 
though on earth by my body and person. Christ was that 
common and public person in whom the whole body of 
His elect are always to be considered and reckoned. We 
fulfilled the law by Him, died by Him, rose from the dead 
by Him, got the victory over sin and death, the devil and 
hell by Him. I had cause to say, Praise ye the Lord, 
Praise God in His sanctuary." 
3* 



CHAPTER IV. 

CALL TO THE MINISTRY. 

The Pilgrim falls into the hands of Giant Despair because 
he has himself first strayed into Byepath Meadow. Bun- 
yan found an explanation of his last convulsion in an act 
of unbelief, on which, on looking back, he perceived that 
he had been guilty. He had been delivered out of his 
first temptation. He had not been sufficiently on his 
guard against temptations that might come in the future; 
nay, he had himself tempted God. His wife had been 
overtaken by a premature confinement, and was suffering 
acutely. It was at the time when Bunyan was exercised 
with questions about the truth of religion altogether. As 
the poor woman lay crying at his side, he had said, mental- 
ly, " Lord, if Thou wilt now remove this sad affliction from 
my wife, and cause that she be troubled no more therewith 
this night, then I shall know that Thou canst discern the 
more secret thoughts of the heart." In a moment the 
pain ceased, and she fell into a sleep which lasted till morn- 
ing. Bunyan, though surprised at the time, forgot what 
had happened, till it rushed back upon his memory, when 
he had committed himself by a similar mental assent to 
selling Christ. He remembered the proof which had been 
given to him that God could and did discern his thoughts. 
God had discerned this second thought also, and in pun- 
ishing him for it had punished him at the same time for 






chap, iv.] CALL TO THE MINISTRY. 53 

the doubt which he had allowed himself to feel. "I 
should have believed His word," he said, " and not have 
put an ' if ' upon the all-seeingness of God." 

The suffering was over now, and he felt that it had been 
infinitely beneficial to him. He understood better the 
glory of God and of his Son. The Scriptures had opened 
their secrets to him, and he had seen them to be in very 
truth the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. Never so 
clearly as after this "temptation" had he perceived "the 
heights of grace, and love, and mercy." Two or three 
times " he had such strange apprehensions of the grace of 
God as had amazed him." The impression was so over- 
powering that if it had continued long " it would have 
rendered him incapable for business." He joined his friend 
Mr. Gilford's church. He was baptised in the Ouse, and 
became a professed member of the Baptist congregation. 
Soon after, his mental conflict was entirely over, and he 
had two quiet years of peace. Before a man can use his 
powers to any purpose, he must arrive at some conviction 
in which his intellect can acquiesce. " Calm yourself," 
says Jean Paul; "it is your first necessity. Be a stoic, 
if nothing else will serve." Bunyan had not been driven 
into stoicism. He was now restored to the possession of 
his faculties, and his remarkable ability was not long in 
showing itself. 

The first consequence of his mental troubles was an ill- 
ness. He had a cough which threatened to turn into con- 
sumption. He thought it was all over with him, and he 
was fixing his eyes " on the heavenly Jerusalem and the 
innumerable company of angels ;" but the danger passed 
off, and he became well and strong in mind and body. 
Notwithstanding his various miseries, he had not neglect- 
ed his business, and had, indeed, been specially successful. 



54 BUNYAN. [chap. 

By the time that he was twenty-five years old he was in 
a position considerably superior to that in which he was 
born. "God," says a contemporary biographer, "had in- 
creased his stores so that he lived in great credit among 
his neighbours." On May 13, 1653, Bedfordshire sent an 
address to Cromwell approving the dismissal of the Long 
Parliament, recognising Oliver himself as the Lord's in- 
strument, and recommending the county magistrates as fit 
persons to serve in the Assembly which was to take its 
place. Among thirty-six names attached to this document 
appear those of Gilford and Bunyan. This speaks for 
itself: he must have been at least a householder and a per- 
son of consideration. It was not, however, as a prosperous 
brazier that Bunyan was to make his way. He had a gift 
of speech, which, in the democratic congregation to which 
he belonged, could not long remain hid. Young as he 
was, he had sounded the depths of spiritual experience. 
Like Dante, he had been in hell — the popular hell of Eng- 
lish Puritanism — and in 1655, he was called upon to take 
part in the " ministry." He was modest, humble, shrink- 
ing. The minister when he preached was, according to 
the theory, an instrument uttering the words not of him- 
self but of the Holy Spirit. A man like Bunyan, who 
really believed this, might well be alarmed. After earnest 
entreaty, however, "he made experiment of his powers" 
in private, and it was at once evident thnt, with the thing 
which these people meant by inspiration, he was abun- 
dantly supplied. No such preacher to the uneducated 
English masses was to be found within the four seas. He 
says that he had no desire of vainglory ; no one who has 
studied his character can suppose that he had. He was a 
man of natural genius, who believed the Protestant form 
of Christianity to be completely true. He knew nothing 



iv.] CALL TO THE MINISTRY. 55 

of philosophy, nothing of history, nothing of literature. 
The doubts to which he acknowledged being without their 
natural food, had never presented themselves in a form 
which would have compelled him to submit to remain un- 
certain. Doubt, as he had felt it, was a direct enemy of 
morality and purity, and as such he had fought with it 
and conquered it. Protestant Christianity was true. All 
mankind were perishing unless they saw it to be true. 
This was his message ; a message — supposing him to have 
been right — of an importance so immeasurable that all else 
was nothing. He was still " afflicted with the fiery darts 
of the devil," but he saw that he must not bury his abili- 
ties. " In fear and trembling," therefore, he set himself 
to the work, and " did according to his power preach the 
Gospel that God had shewn him." 

"The Lord led him to begin where his Word began — 
with sinners. This part of my work," he says, " I fulfilled 
with a great sense, for the terrors of the law and guilt for 
my transgressions lay heavy on my conscience. I preach- 
ed what I felt. I had been sent to my hearers as from 
the dead. I went myself in chains to preach to them in 
chains, and carried that fire in my own conscience that I 
persuaded them to beware of. I have gone full of guilt 
and terror to the pulpit door; God carried me on with a 
strong hand, for neither guilt nor hell could take me off." 

Many of Bunyan's addresses remain in the form of the- 
ological treatises, and, that I may not. have to return to the 
subject, I shall give some account of them. His doctrine 
was the doctrine of the best and strongest minds in Eu- 
rope. It had been believed by Luther, it had been believed 
by Knox. It was believed at that moment by Oliver 
Cromwell as completely as by Bunyan himself. It was 
believed, so far as such a person could be said to believe 



56 BUNYAN. [chap. 

anything, by the all-accomplished Leibnitz himself. Few 
educated people use the language of it now. In them it 
was a fire from heaven shining like a sun in a dark world. 
With us the fire has gone out ; in the place of it we have 
but smoke and ashes ; and the Evangelical mind, in search 
of "something deeper and truer than satisfied the last cen- 
tury," is turning back to Catholic verities. "What Bunyan 
had to say may be less than the whole truth : we shall 
scarcely find the still missing part of it in lines of thought 
which we have outgrown. 

Bunyan preached wherever opportunity served — in 
woods, in barns, on village greens, or in town chapels. 
The substance of his sermons he revised and published. 
He began, as he said, with sinners, explaining the condi- 
tion of men in the world. They were under the law, or 
they were under grace. Every person that came into the 
world was born under the law, and as such was bound, 
under pain of eternal damnation, to fulfil completely and 
continually every one of the Ten Commandments. The 
Bible said plainly, " Cursed is every one that continueth 
not in all things which are written in the book of the law 
to do them." " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." The 
Ten Commandments extended into many more, and to 
fail in a single one was as fatal as to break them all. A 
man might go on for a long time, for sixty years perhaps, 
without falling. Bunyan does not mean that anyone 
really could do all this, but he assumes the possibility ; 
yet he says if the man slipped once before he died, he 
would eternally perish. The law does not refer to words 
and actions only, but to thoughts and feelings. It fol- 
lowed a man in his prayers, and detected a wandering 
thought. It allowed no repentance to those who lived 
and died under it. If it was asked whether God could 



iv] CALL TO THE MINISTRY. 57 

not pardon, as earthly judges pardon criminals, the answer 
was that it is not the law which is merciful to the earthly 
offender, but the magistrate. The law is an eternal prin- 
ciple. The magistrate may forgive a man without exact- 
ing satisfaction. The law knows no forgiveness. It can 
be as little changed as an axiom of mathematics. Re- 
pentance cannot undo the past. Let a man leave his sins 
and live as purely as an angel all the rest of his life, his 
old faults remain in the account against him, and his state 
is as bad as ever it was. God's justice once offended 
knows not pity or compassion, but runs on the offender 
like a lion and throws him into prison, there to lie to all 
eternity unless infinite satisfaction be given to it. And 
that satisfaction no son of Adam could possibly make. 

This conception of Divine justice, not as a sentence of 
a judge, but as the action of an eternal law, is identical 
with Spinoza's. That every act involves consequences 
which cannot be separated from it, and may continue 
operative to eternity, is a philosophical position which is 
now generally admitted. Combined with the traditionary 
notions of a future judgment and punishment in hell, the 
recognition that there was a law in the case, and that the 
law could not be broken, led to the frightful inference that 
each individual was liable to be kept alive and tortured 
through all eternity. And this, in fact, was the fate really 
in store for every human creature unless some extraordi- 
nary remedy could be found. Bunyan would allow no 
merit to anyone. He would not have it supposed that 
only the profane or grossly wicked were in danger from 
the law. "A man," he says, " may be turned ffom a vain, 
loose, open, profane conversation and sinning against the 
law, to a holy, righteous, religious life, and yet be under 
the same state and as sure to be damned as the others 



58 BUNYAN. [chap. 

that arc more profane and loose." The natural man might 
think it strange, but the language of the curse was not to 
be mistaken. Cursed is every one who has failed to fulfil 
the whole law. There was not a person in the whole 
world who had not himself sinned in early life. All had 
sinned in Adam also, and St. Paul had said in consequence, 
" ' There is none that doeth good, no, not one !' The law 
was given not that we might be saved by obeying it, but 
that we might know the holiness of God and our own 
vileness, and that we might understand that we should not 
be damned for nothing. God would have no quarrelling 
at His just condemning of us at that day." 

This is Bunyan's notion of the position in which we 
all naturally stand in this world, and from which the sub- 
stitution of Christ's perfect fulfilment of the law alone 
rescues us. It is calculated, no doubt, to impress on us a 
profound horror of moral evil when the penalty attached 
to it is so fearful. But it is dangerous to introduce into 
religion metaphysical conceptions of " law." The cord 
cracks that is strained too tightly ; and it is only for brief 
periods of high spiritual tension that a theology so merci- 
less can sustain itself. No one with a conscience in him 
will think of claiming any merit for himself. But we 
know also that there are degrees of demerit, and, theory 
or no theory, we fall back on the first verse of the Eng- 
lish Liturgy, as containing a more endurable account of 
things. 

For this reason, among others, Bunyan disliked the 
Liturgy. He thought the doctrine of it false, and he ob- 
jected to a Liturgy on principle. He has a sermon on 
Prayer, in which he insists that to be worth anything 
prayer must be the expression of an inward feeling; and 
that people cannot feel in lines laid down for them. 



iv.] CALL TO THE MINISTRY. W 

Forms of prayer he thought especially mischievous to chil- 
dren, as accustoming them to use words to which they 
attached no meaning. 

" My judgment," he says, " is that men go the wrong 
way to learn their children to pray. It seems to me a 
better way for people to tell their children betimes what 
cursed creatures they are, how they are under the wrath 
of God by reason of original and actual sin ; also to tell 
them the nature of God's wrath and the duration of 
misery, which, if they would conscientiously do, they 
would sooner learn their children to pray than they do. 
The way that men learn to pray is by conviction of sin, 
and this is the way to make our ' sweet babes ' do so 
too." 

" Sweet babes " is unworthy of Bunyan. There is little 
sweetness in a state of things so stern as he conceives. 
He might have considered, too, that there was a danger 
of making children unreal in another and worse sense by 
teaching them doctrines which neither child nor man can 
comprehend. It may be true that a single sin may con- 
sign me to everlasting hell, but I cannot be made to ac- 
knowledge the justice of it. " Wrath of God " and such 
expressions are out of place when we are brought into the 
presence of metaphysical laws. Wrath corresponds to 
free-will misused. It is senseless and extravagant when 
pronounced against actions which men cannot help, when 
the faulty action is the necessary consequence of their 
nature, and the penalty the necessary consequence of the 
action. 

The same confusion of thought lies in the treatment of 
the kindred subjects of Free-will, Election, and Reproba- 
tion. The logic must be maintained, and God's moral at- 
tributes simultaneously vindicated. Bunyan argues about 
E 



60 BUNYAN. [chap. 

it as ingeniously as Leibnitz himself. Those who suppose 
that specific guilt attaches to particular acts, that all men 
are put into the world free to keep the Commandments or 
to break them, that they are equally able to do one as to 
do the other, and are, therefore, proper objects of punish- 
ment, hold an opinion which is consistent in itself, but is 
in entire contradiction with facts. Children are not as able 
to control their inclinations as grown men, and one man is 
not as able to control himself as another. Some have no 
difficulty from the first, and are constitutionally good ; some 
are constitutionally weak, or have incurable propensities for 
evil. Some are brought up with care and insight ; others 
seem never to have any chance at all. So evident is this, 
that impartial thinkers have questioned the reality of hu- 
man guilt in the sense in which it is generally understood. 
Even Butler allows that if we look too curiously we may 
have a difficulty in finding where it lies. And here, if any- 
where, there is a real natural truth in the doctrine of Elec- 
tion, independent of the merit of those who are so happy 
as to find favor. Bunyan, however, reverses the inference. 
He will have all guilty together, those who do well and 
those who do ill. Even the elect are in themselves as bad- 
ly off as the reprobate, and are equally included under sin. 
Those who are saved are saved for Christ's merits and not 
for their own. 

Men of calmer temperament accept facts as they find 
them. They are too conscious of their ignorance to in- 
sist on explaining problems which are beyond their reach. 
Bunyan lived in an age of intense religious excitement, 
when the strongest minds were exercising themselves on 
those questions. It is noticeable that the most effective 
intellects inclined to necessitarian conclusions : some in the 
shape of Calvinism, some in the corresponding philosophic 



iv.] CALL TO THE MINISTRY. 61 

form of Spinozism. From both alike there came an abso- 
lute submission to the decrees of God, and a passionate 
devotion to his service ; while the morality of Free-will is 
cold and calculating. Appeals to a sense of duty do not 
reach beyond the understanding. The enthusiasm which 
will stir men's hearts and give them a real power of resisting 
temptation must be nourished on more invigorating food. 

But I need dwell no more on a subject which is unsuited 
for these pages. 

The object of Bunyan, like that of Luther, like that of 
all great spiritual teachers, was to bring his wandering fel- 
low-mortals into obedience to the commandments, even 
while he insisted on the worthlessness of it. He sounded 
the strings to others which had sounded loudest in him- 
self. When he passed from mysticism into matters of or- 
dinary life, he showed the same practical good sense which 
distinguishes the chief of all this order of thinkers — St. 
Paul. There is a sermon of Bunyan's on Christian be- 
haviour, on the duties of parents to children, and masters 
to servants, which might be studied with as much advan- 
tage in English households as The Pilgrim's Progress it- 
self. To fathers he says, " Take heed that the misdeeds 
for which thou correctest thy children be not learned them 
by thee. Many children learn that wickedness of their 
parents, for which they beat and chastise them. Take 
heed that thou smile not upon them to encourage them in 
small faults, lest that thy carriage to them be an encour- 
agement to them to commit greater faults. Take heed 
that thou use not unsavoury and unseemly words in thy 
chastising of them, as railing, miscalling, and the like — this 
is devilish. Take heed that thou do not use them to many 
chiding words and threatenings, mixed with lightness and 
laughter. This will harden." 



02 BUNYAN. [chap. 

And again : " I tell you that if parents carry it lovingly 
towards their children, mixing their mercies with loving 
rebukes, and their loving rebukes with fatherly and moth- 
erly compassions, they are more likely to save their chil- 
dren than by being churlish and severe to them. Even if 
these things do not save them, if their mercy do them no 
good, yet it will greatly ease them at the day of death to 
consider, I have done by love as much as I could to save 
and deliver my child from hell." 

Whole volumes on education have said less, or less to 
the purpose, than these simple words. Unfortunately, par- 
ents do not read Bunyan. He is left to children. 

Similarly, he says to masters : — 

" It is thy duty so to behave thyself to thy servant that 
thy service may not only be for thy good, but for the 
good of thy servant, and that in body and soul. Deal 
with him as to admonition as with thy children. Take 
heed thou do not turn thy servants into slaves by over- 
charging them in thy work with thy greediness. Take 
heed thou carry not thyself to thy servant as he of whom 
it is- said, " He is such a man of Belial that his servants 
cannot speak to him." The Apostle bids you forbear to 
threaten them, because you also have a Master in Heaven. 
Masters, give your servants that which is just, just labour 
and just wages. Servants that are truly godly care not 
how cheap they serve their masters, provided they may 
get into godly families, or where they may be convenient 
for the Word. But if a master or mistress takes this op^ 
portunity to make a prey of their servants, it is abominable. 
I have heard poor servants say that in some carnal families 
they have had more liberty to God's things and more fair- 
ness of dealing than among many professors. Such masters 
make religion to stink before the inhabitants of the land." 



iv.] CALL TO THE MINISTRY. 63 

Bunyan was generally charitable in his judgment upon 
others. If there was any exception, it was of professors 
who discredited their calling by conceit and worldliness. 

" No sin," he says, " reigneth more in the world than 
pride among professors. The thing is too apparent for 
any man to deny. We may and do see pride display it- 
self in the apparel and carriage of professors almost as 
much as among any in the land. I have seen church mem- 
bers so decked and bedaubed with their fangles and toys 
that, when they have been at worship, I have wondered 
with what faces such painted persons could sit in the 
place where they were without swooning. I once talked 
with a maid, by way of reproof for her fond and gaudy 
garment ; she told me the tailor would make it so. Poor 
proud girl, she gave orders to the tailor to make it so." 

I will give one more extract from Bunyan's pastoral ad- 
dresses. It belongs to a later period in his ministry, when 
the law had, for a time, remade Dissent into a crime ; but 
it will throw light on the part of his story which we are 
now approaching, and it is in every way very characteris- 
tic of him. He is speaking to sufferers under persecution. 
He says to them : — 

" Take heed of being offended with magistrates, because 
by their statutes they may cross thy inclinations. It is given 
to them to bear the sword, and a command is to thee, if 
thy heart cannot acquiesce with all things, with meekness 
and patience to suffer. Discontent in the mind some- 
times puts discontent into the mouth ; and discontent in 
the mouth doth sometimes also put a halter about thy 
neck. For as a man speaking a word in jest may for that 
be hanged in earnest, so he that speaks in discontent may 
die for it in sober sadness. Above all, get thy conscience 
possessed more and more with this, that the magistrate is 



64 BUNYAN. [chap. iv. 

God's ordinance, and is ordered of God as such ; that he 
is the minister of God to thee for good, and that it is thy 
duty to fear him and to pray for him ; to give thanks to 
God for him and be subject to him ; as both Paul and 
Peter admonish us; and that not only for wrath, but for 
conscience' sake. For all other arguments come short of 
binding the soul when this argument is wanting, until we 
believe that of God we are bound thereto. 

" I speak not these things as knowing any that are dis- 
affected to the government, for I love to be alone, if not 
with godly men, in things that are convenient. I speak 
to show my loyalty to the king, and my love to my fel- 
low-subjects, and my desire that all Christians shall walk 
in ways of peace and truth." 



CHAPTER V. 



ARREST AND TRIAL. 



Bunyan's preaching enterprise became an extraordinary 
success. All the Midland Counties heard of his fame, and 
demanded to hear him. He had been Deacon under Gif- 
ford at the Bedford Church ; but he was in such request 
as a preacher, that, in 1657, he was released from his du- 
ties there as unable to attend to them. Sects were spring- 
ing up all over England as weeds in a hot-bed. He was 
soon in controversy ; controversy with Church of England 
people ; controversy with the Ranters, who believed Christ 
to be a myth ; controversy with the Quakers, who, at their 
outset, disbelieved in his Divinity and in the inspiration of 
the Scriptures. Envy at his rapidly acquired reputation 
brought him baser enemies. He was called a witch, a 
Jesuit, a highwayman. It was reported that he had " his 
misses," that he had two wives, etc. " My foes have 
missed their mark in this," he said, with honest warmth : 
" I am not the man. If all the fornicators and adulterers 
in England were hanged by the neck, John Bunyan, the 
object of their envy, would be still alive and well. I know 
not whether there be such a thing as a woman breathing 
under the cope of the whole heavens but by their apparel, 
their children, or common fame, except my wife." 

But a more serious trial was now before him. Crom- 



66 BUNYAN. [chap. 

well passed away. The Protectorate came to an end. 
England decided that it had had enough of Puritans and 
republicans, and would give the Stuarts and the Established 
Church another trial. A necessary consequence was the 
revival of the Act of Uniformity. The Independents were 
not meek like the Baptists, using no weapons to oppose 
what they disapproved but passive resistance. The same 
motives which had determined the original constitution of 
a Church combining the characters of Protestant and 
Catholic, instead of leaving religion free, were even more 
powerful at the Restoration than they had been at the ac- 
cession of Elizabeth. Before toleration is possible, men 
must have learnt to tolerate toleration itself ; and in times 
of violent convictions, toleration is looked on as indiffer- 
ence, and indifference as Atheism in disguise. Catholics 
and Protestants, Churchmen and Dissenters, regarded one 
another as enemies of God and the State, with whom no 
peace was possible. Toleration had been tried by the 
Valois princes in France. Church and chapel had been 
the rendezvous of armed fanatics. The preachers blew 
the war-trumpet, and every town and village had been the 
scene of furious conflicts, which culminated in the Massacre 
of St. Bartholomew. The same result would have followed 
in England if the same experiment had been ventured. 
The different communities were forbidden to have their 
separate places of worship, and services were contrived 
which moderate men of all sorts could use and interpret 
after their own convictions. The instrument required to 
be delicately handled. It succeeded tolerably as long as 
Elizabeth lived. When Elizabeth died, the balance was 
no longer fairly kept. The High-Church party obtained 
the ascendency, and abused their power. Tyranny brought 
revolution, and the Catholic element in turn disappeared. 



v.] ARREST AND TRIAL. 67 

The Bishops were displaced by Presbyterian elders. The 
Presbyterian elders became in turn " hireling wolves," " old 
priest" written in new characters. Cromwell had left con- 
science free to Protestants. But even he had refused 
equal liberty to Catholics and Episcopalians. He was 
gone too, and Church and King were back again. How 
were they to stand ? The stern, resolute men, to whom 
the Commonwealth had been the establishment of God's 
kingdom upon earth, were as little inclined to keep terms 
with Antichrist as the Church people had been inclined 
to keep terms with Cromwell. To have allowed them to 
meet openly in their conventicles would have been to make 
over the whole of England to them as a seed-bed in which 
to plant sedition. It was pardonable, it was even neces- 
sary, for Charles II. and his advisers to fall back upon 
Elizabeth's principles, at least as long as the ashes were 
still glowing. Indulgence had to be postponed till cooler 
times. With the Fifth Monarchy men abroad, every 
chapel, except those of the Baptists, would have been a 
magazine of explosives. 

Under the 35th of Elizabeth, Nonconformists refusing 
to attend worship in the parish churches were to be im- 
prisoned till they made their submission. Three months 
were allowed them to consider. If at the end of that 
time they were still obstinate, they were to be banished 
the realm ; and if they subsequently returned to England 
without permission from the Crown, they were liable to 
execution as felons. This Act had fallen with the Long 
Parliament, but at the Restoration it was held to have re- 
vived and to be still in force. The parish churches were 
cleared of their unordained ministers. The Dissenters' 
chapels were closed. The people were required by proc- 
lamation to be present on Sundays in their proper place. 
4 



68 BUNYAN. [chap. 

So the majority of the nation had decided. If they had 
wished for religious liberty they would not have restored 
the Stuarts, or they would have insisted on conditions, and 
would have seen that they were observed. 

Vernier's plot showed the reality of the danger and jus- 
tified the precaution. 

The Baptists and Quakers might have been trusted to 
discourage violence, but it was impossible to distinguish 
among the various sects, whose tenets were unknown and 
even unsettled. The great body of CromwelFs spiritual 
supporters believed that armed resistance to a government 
which they disapproved was not only lawful, but was en- 
joined. 

Thus, no sooner was Charles II. on the throne than the 
Nonconformists found themselves again under bondage. 
Their separate meetings were prohibited, and they were 
not only forbidden to worship in their own fashion, but 
they had to attend church, under penalties. The Bedford 
Baptists refused to obey. Their meeting-house in the 
town was shut up, but they continued to assemble in woods 
and outhouses; Bunyan preaching to them as before, and 
going to the place in disguise. Informers were soon upon 
his track. The magistrates had received orders to be 
vigilant. Bunyan was the most prominent Dissenter in 
the neighbourhood. He was too sensible to court martyr- 
dom. He had intended to leave the town till more quiet 
times, and had arranged to meet a few of his people once 
more to give them a parting address. It was November 
12, 1660. The place agreed on was a house in the village 
of Samsell, near Harlington. Notice of his intention was 
privately conveyed to Mr. Wingate, a magistrate in the 
adjoining district. The constables were set to watch the 
house, and were directed to bring Bunyan before him. 



v.] ARREST AND TRIAL. 69 

Some member of the congregation heard of it. Bunyan 
was warned, and was advised to stay at home that night, 
or else to conceal himself. His departure had been already 
arranged ; but when he learnt that a warrant was actually 
out against him, he thought that he was bound to stay and 
face the danger. He was the first Nonconformist who 
had been marked for arrest. If he flinched after he had 
been singled out by name, the whole body of his con- 
gregation would be discouraged. Go to church he would 
not, or promise to go to church; but he was willing to 
suffer whatever punishment the law might order. Thus, 
at the time and place which had been agreed on, he was 
in the room at Samsell, with his Bible in his hand, and 
was about to begin his address, when the constables enter- 
ed and arrested him. He made no resistance. He desired 
only to be allowed to say a few words, which the con- 
stables permitted. He then prepared to go with them. 
He was not treated with any roughness. It was too late 
to take him that night before the magistrate." His friends 
undertook for his appearance when he should be required, 
and he went home with them. The constables came for 
him again on the following afternoon. 

Mr. Wingate, when the information was first brought to 
him, supposed that he had fallen on a nest of Fifth Mon- 
archy men. He enquired, when Bunyan was brought in, 
how many arms had been found at the meeting. When 
he learnt that there were no arms, and that it had no po- 
litical character whatever, he evidently thought it was a 
matter of no consequence. He told Bunyan that he had 
been breaking the law, and asked him why he could not 
attend to his business. Bunyan said that his object in 
teaching was merely to persuade people to give up their 
sins. He could do that and attend to his business also. 



70 BUNYAtt. [chap. 

Wingate answered that the law must be obeyed. He 
must commit Bunyan for trial at the Quarter Sessions ; 
but he would take bail for him, if his securities would en- 
gage that he would not preach again meanwhile. Bunyan 
refused to be bailed on any such terms. Preach he would 
and must, and the recognizances would be forfeited. Af- 
ter such an answer, Wingate could only send him to gaol ; 
he could not help himself. The committal was made 
out, and Bunyan was being taken away, when two of his 
friends met him, who were acquainted with Wingate, and 
they begged the constable to wait. They went in to the 
magistrate. They told him who and what Bunyan was. 
The magistrate had not the lease desire to be hard, and it 
was agreed that if he would himself give some general 
promise of a vague kind he might be let go altogether. 
Bunyan was called back. Another magistrate who knew 
him had by this time joined Wingate. They both said 
that they were reluctant to send him to prison. If he 
would promise them that he would not call the people to- 
gether any more, he might go home. 

They had purposely chosen a form of words which 
would mean as little as possible. But Bunyan would not 
accept an evasion. He said that he would not force the 
people to come together, but if he was in a place where 
the people were met, he should certainly speak to them. 
The magistrate repeated that the meetings were unlawful. 
They would be satisfied if Bunyan would simply promise 
that he would not call such meetings. It was as plain as 
possible that they wished to dismiss the case, and they 
were thrusting words into his mouth which he could 
use without a mental reservation ; but he persisted that 
there were many ways in which a meeting might be 
called ; if people came together to hear him, knowing that 



v.] ARREST AND TRIAL. 11 

he would speak, he might be said to have called them to- 
gether. 

Remonstrances and entreaties were equally useless, and, 
with extreme unwillingness, they committed him to Bed- 
ford gaol to wait for the sessions. 

It is not for ns to say that Bunyan was too precise. 
He was himself the best judge of what his conscience and 
his situation required. To himself, at any rate, his trial 
was at the moment most severe. He had been left a wid- 
ower a year or two before, with four young children, one 
of them blind. He had lately married a second time. 
His wife was pregnant. The agitation at her husband's 
arrest brought on premature labour, and she was lying in 
his house in great danger. He was an affectionate man, 
and the separation at such a time was peculiarly distress- 
ing. After some weeks the Quarter Sessions came on. 
Bunyan was indicted under the usual form, that he, " be- 
ing a person of such and such condition, had, since such a 
time, devilishly and pertinaciously abstained from coming 
to church to hear Divine service, and was a common up- 
holder of unlawful meetings and conventicles, to the great 
disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this 
kingdom, contrary to the laws of our Sovereign Lord the 
King." 

There seems to have been a wish to avoid giving him 
a formal trial. He was not required to plead, and it may 
have been thought that he had been punished sufficient- 
ly. He was asked why he did not go to church ? He said 
that the Prayer-book was made by man ; he was ordered 
in the Bible to pray with the spirit and the understanding, 
not with the spirit and the Prayer-book. The magistrates, 
referring to another Act of Parliament, cautioned Bunyan 
against finding fault with the Prayer-book, or he would 



72 BUNYAN. [chap. 

bring himself into further trouble. Justice Keelin, who pre- 
sided, said (so Bunyan declares, and it has been the stand- 
ing jest of his biographers ever since) that the Prayer-book 
had been in use ever since the Apostles' time. Perhaps 
the words were that parts of it had been then in use (the 
Apostles' Creed, for instance), and thus they would have 
been strictly true. However this might be, they told him 
kindly, as Mr. Wingate had done, that it would be better 
for him if he would keep to his proper work. The law 
had prohibited conventicles. He might teach, if he pleased, 
in his own family and among his friends. He must not 
call large numbers of people together. He was as imprac- 
ticable as before, and the magistrates, being but unregen- 
erate mortals, may be pardoned if they found him provok- 
ing. If, he said, it was lawful for him to do good to a 
few, it must be equally lawful to do good to many. He 
had a gift, which he was bound to use. If it was sinful 
for men to meet together to exhort one another to follow 
Christ, he should sin still. 

He was compelling the Court to punish him, whether 
they wished it or not. He describes the scene as if the 
choice had rested with the magistrates to convict him or 
to let him go. If he was bound to do his duty, they 
were equally bound to do theirs. They took his answers 
as a plea of guilty to the indictment, and Justice Keelin, 
who was chairman, pronounced his sentence in the terms 
of the Act. He was to go to prison for three months ; if, 
at the end of three months, he still refused to conform, he 
was to be transported ; and if he came back without li- 
cense he would be hanged. Bunyan merely answered, "If 
I were out of prison to-day, I would preach the Gospel 
again to-morrow." More might have followed, but the 
gaoler led him away." 



v.] ARREST AND TRIAL. 73 

There were three gaols in Bedford, and no evidence has 
been found to show in which of the three Bunyan was 
confined. Two of them, the county gaol and the town 
gaol, were large, roomy buildings. Tradition has chosen 
the third, a small lock-up, fourteen feet square, which stood 
over the river between the central arches of the old bridge ; 
and as it appears from the story that he had at times fifty 
or sixty fellow-prisoners, and as he admits himself that he 
was treated at first with exceptional kindness, it may be 
inferred that tradition, in selecting the prison on the bridge, 
was merely desiring to exhibit the sufferings of the Non- 
conformist martyr in a sensational form, and that lie was 
never in this prison at all. When it was pulled down in 
1811, a gold ring was found in the rubbish, with the initials 
" J. B." upon it. This is one of the " trifles light as air " 
which carry conviction to the " jealous " only, and is too 
slight a foundation on which to assert a fact so inherently 
improbable. 

When the three months were over, the course of law 
would have brought him again to the bar, when he would 
have had to choose between conformity and exile. There 
was still the same desire to avoid extremities, and as the 
day approached, the clerk of the peace was sent to per- 
suade him into some kind of compliance. Various insur- 
rections had broken out since his arrest, and must have 
shown him, if he could have reflected, that there was real 
reason for the temporary enforcement of the Act. He 
was not asked to give up preaching. He was asked only 
to give up public preaching. It was well known that he 
had no disposition to rebellion. Even the going to church 
was not insisted on. The clerk of the peace told him that 
he might "exhort his neighbours in private discourse," if 
only he would not bring the people together in numbers, 



74 BUNYAN. [chap. 

which the magistrates would be bound to notice. In this 
way he might continue his usefulness, and would not be 
interfered with. 

Bunyan knew his own freedom from seditious inten- 
tions. He would not see that the magistrates could not 
suspend the law and make an exception in his favour. 
They were going already to the utmost limit of indul- 
gence. But the more he disapproved of rebellion, the 
more punctilious he was in carrying out resistance of an- 
other kind which he held to be legitimate. He was a 
representative person, and he thought that in yielding he 
would hurt the cause of religious liberty. " The law," he 
said, "had provided two ways of obeying — one to obey 
actively, and if he could not in conscience obey actively, 
then to suffer whatever penalty was inflicted on him." 

The clerk of the peace could produce no effect. Bun- 
yan rather looked on him as a false friend trying to en- 
tangle him. The three months elapsed, and the magis- 
trates had to determine what was to be done. If Bunyan 
was brought before them, they must exile him. His case 
was passed over and. he was left in prison, where his wife 
and children were allowed to visit him daily. He did not 
understand the law or appreciate their forbearance. He 
exaggerated his danger. At the worst he could only have 
been sent to America, where he might have remained as 
long as he pleased. He feared that he might perhaps be 
hanged. 

" I saw what was coming," he said, " and had two consid- 
erations especially on my heart — how to be able to endure, 
should my imprisonment be long and tedious, and how to 
be able to encounter death should that be my portion. I 
was made to see that if I would suffer rightly, I must pass 
sentence of death upon everything that can properly be 



v.] ARREST AND TRIAL. 75 

called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, 
my children, my health, my enjoyments all as dead to me, 
and myself as dead to them. Yet I was a man compass- 
ed with infirmities. The parting with my wife and poor 
children hath often been to me in this place (the prison in 
which he was writing) as the pulling of my flesh from my 
bones ; and that not only because I am too, too fond of 
those great mercies, but also because I should have often 
brought to my mind the hardships, miseries, and wants my 
poor family was like to meet with should I be taken from 
them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my 
heart than all I had besides. Poor child, thought I, what 
sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world ! 
Thou must be beaten, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a 
thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind 
should blow on thee. But yet, thought I, I must venture 
all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. 
I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the 
head of his wife and children. Yet, thought I, I must do 
it — I must do it. I had this for consideration, that if I 
should now venture all for God, I engaged God to take 
care of my concernments. Also, I had dread of the tor- 
ments of hell, which I was sure they must partake of that 
for fear of the cross do shrink from their profession. I 
had this much upon my spirit, that my imprisonment 
might end in the gallows for aught I could tell. In the 
condition I now was in I was not fit to die, nor indeed 
did I think I could if I should be called to it. I feared I 
might show a weak heart, and give occasion to the enemy. 
This lay with great trouble on me, for methought I was 
ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees for 
such a cause as this. The things of God were kept out of 
my sight. The tempter followed me with, 'But whither 
F 4* 



76 BUNYAN. [chap. t. 

must you go when you die? What will become of you? 
What evidence have you for heaven and glory, and an in- 
heritance among them that are sanctified?' Thus was I 
tossed many weeks ; but I felt it was for the Word and 
way of God that I was in this condition. God might give 
me comfort or not as He pleased. I was bound, but He 
was free — yea, it was my duty to stand to His Word, 
whether He would ever look upon me or no, or save me at 
the last. Wherefore, thought I, the point being thus, I am 
for going on and venturing my eternal state with Christ, 
whether I have comfort here or no. If God does not 
come in, thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blind- 
fold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell. 
Now was my heart full of comfort." 

The ladder was an imaginary ladder, but the resolution 
was a genuine manly one, such as lies at the bottom of all 
brave and honourable action. Others who have thought 
very differently from Bunyan about such matters have felt 
the same as he felt. Be true to yourself, whatever comes, 
even if damnation come. Better hell with an honest heart, 
than heaven with cowardice and insincerity. It was the 
more creditable to Bunyan, too, because the spectres and 
hobgoblins had begun occasionally to revisit him. 

" Of all temptations I ever met with in my life," he says, 
" to question the being of God and the truth of His Gos- 
pel is the worst, and worst to be borne. When this temp- 
tation comes, it takes my girdle from me, and removes the 
foundation from under me. Though God has visited my 
soul with never so blessed a discovery of Himself, yet af- 
terwards I have been in my spirit so filled with darkness, 
that I could not so much as once conceive what that God 
and that comfort was with which I had been refreshed." 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE BEDFORD GAOL. 

The irregularities in the proceedings against Bunyan had 
perhaps been suggested by the anticipation of the gen- 
eral pardon which was expected in the following spring. 
At the coronation of Charles, April 23, 1661, an order was 
issued for the release of prisoners who were in gaol for 
any offences short of felony. Those who were waiting 
their trials were to be let go at once. Those convicted 
and under sentence might sue out a pardon under the 
Great Seal at any time within a year from the proclama- 
tion. Was Bunyan legally convicted or not ? He had 
not pleaded directly to the indictment. No evidence had 
been heard against him. His trial had been a conversa- 
tion between himself and the Court. The point had been 
raised by his friends. His wife had been in London to 
make interest for him, and a peer had presented a petition 
in Bunyan's behalf in the House of Lords. The judges 
had been directed to look again into the matter at the 
midsummer assizes. The high-sheriff was active in Bun- 
yan's favour. The Judges Twisden, Chester, and no less a 
person than Sir Matthew Hale, appear to have concluded 
that his conviction was legal, that he could not be tried 
again, and that he must apply for pardon in the regular 
way. His wife, however, at the instance of the sheriff, 



18 BUNYAN. [chap. 

obtained a hearing, and they listened courteously to what 
she had to say. When she had done, Mr. Justice Twisden 
put the natural question, whether, if her husband was re- 
leased, he would refrain from preaching in public for the 
future. If he intended to repeat his offence immediately 
that he was at liberty, his liberty would only bring him 
into a worse position. The wife at once said that he dared 
not leave off preaching as long as he could speak. The 
judge asked if she thought her husband was to be allowed 
to do as he pleased. She said that he was a peaceable 
person, and wished only to be restored to a position in 
which he could maintain his family. They had four small 
children who could not help themselves, one of them being 
blind, and they had nothing to live upon as long as her 
husband was in prison but the charity of their friends. 
Hale remarked that she looked very young to have four 
children. " I am but mother-in-law to them," she said, 
"having not been married yet full two years. I was with 
child when my husband was first apprehended, but being 
young, I being dismayed at the news fell in labour, and so 
continued for eight days. I was delivered, but my child 
died." 

Hale was markedly kind. He told her that, as the con- 
viction had been recorded, they could not set it aside. 
She might sue out a pardon if she pleased, or she might 
obtain " a writ of error," which would be simple and less 
expensive. 

She left the court in tears — tears, however, which were 
not altogether tears of suffering innocence. " It was not 
so much," she said, " because they were so hardhearted 
against me and my husband, but to think what a sad ac- 
count such poor creatures would have to give at the com- 
ing of the Lord." No doubt both Bun van and she 



vi.] THE BEDFORD GAOL. 79 

thought themselves cruelly injured, and they confounded 
the law with the administration of it. Persons better in- 
formed than they often choose to forget that judges are 
sworn to administer the law which they find, and rail at 
them as if the sentences which they are obliged by their 
oaths to pass were their own personal acts. 

A pardon, it cannot be too often said, would have been 
of no use to Bunyan, because he was determined to per- 
severe in disobeying a law which he considered to be un- 
just. The most real kindness which could be shown to 
him was to leave him where he was. His imprisonment 
was intended to be little more than nominal. His gaoler, 
not certainly without the sanction of the sheriff, let him 
go where he pleased; once even so far as London. He 
used his liberty as he had declared that he would. " I 
followed my wonted course of preaching," he says, " tak- 
ing all occasions that were put in my hand to visit the 
people of God." This was deliberate defiance. The au- 
thorities saw that he must be either punished in earnest, 
or the law would fall into contempt. He admitted that 
he expected to be "roundly dealt with." His indulgences 
were withdrawn, and he was put into close confinement. 

Sessions now followed sessions, and assizes, assizes. His 
detention was doubtless irregular, for by law he should 
have been sent beyond the seas. He petitioned to be 
brought to trial again, and complained loudly that his 
petition was not listened to ; but no legislator, in framing 
an Act of Parliament, ever contemplated an offender in 
so singular a position. Bunyan was simply trying his 
strength against the Crown and Parliament. The judges 
and magistrates respected his character, and were unwill- 
ing to drive him out of the country ; he had himself no 
wish for liberty on that condition. The only resource, 



80 BUNYAN. [chap. 

therefore, was to prevent him forcibly from repeating an 
offence that would compel them to adopt harsh measures 
which they were so earnestly trying to avoid. 

Such was the world-famous imprisonment of John Bun- 
yan, which has been the subject of so much eloquent dec- 
lamation. It lasted in all for more than twelve years. It 
might have ended at any time if he would have promised 
to confine his addresses to a private circle. It did end 
after six years. He was released under the first declara- 
tion of indulgence ; but as he instantly recommenced his 
preaching, he was arrested again. Another six years went 
by ; he was again let go, and was taken once more im- 
mediately after, preaching in a wood. This time he was 
detained but a few months, and in form more than reality. 
The policy of the government was then changed, and he 
was free for the rest of his life. 

His condition during his long confinement has furnished 
a subject for pictures which if correct would be extremely 
affecting. It is true that, being unable to attend to his 
usual business, he spent his unoccupied hours in making 
tags for boot-laces. AVith this one fact to build on, and 
with the assumption that the scene of his sufferings was 
the Bridge Lockhouse, Nonconformist imagination has 
drawn a u den " for us, " where there was not a yard or a 
court to walk in for daily exercise ;" " a damp and dreary 
cell;" "a narrow chink which admits a few scanty rays 
of light to render visible the abode of woe ;" " the pris- 
oner, pale and emaciated, seated on the humid earth, pur- 
suing his daily task, to earn the morsel which prolongs his 
existence and his confinement together. Near him, reclin- 
ing in pensive sadness, his blind daughter, five other dis- 
tressed children, and an affectionate wife, whom pinching 
want and grief have worn down to the gate of death. Ten 



vi.] THE BEDFORD GAOL. 81 

summer suns have rolled over the mansion of his misery 
whose reviving rays have never once penetrated his sad 
abode," &c, &c. 

If this description resembles or approaches the truth, 
I can but say that to have thus abandoned to want their 
most distinguished pastor and his family was intensely 
discreditable to the Baptist community. English prisons 
in the seventeenth century were not models of good man- 
agement. But prisoners, whose friends could pay for 
them, were not consigned to damp and dreary cells ; and 
in default of evidence of which not a particle exists, I can- 
not charge so reputable a community with a neglect so 
scandalous. The entire story is in itself incredible. Bun- 
yan was prosperous in his business. He was respected 
and looked up to by a large and growing body of citizens, 
including persons of wealth and position in London. He 
was a representative sufferer fighting the battle of all the 
Nonconformists in England. He had active supporters in 
the town of Bedford and among the gentlemen of the 
county. The authorities, so far as can be inferred from 
their actions, tried from the first to deal as gently with 
him as he would allow them to do. Is it conceivable that 
the Baptists would have left his family to starve ; or that 
his own confinement would have been made so absurdly 
and needlessly cruel? Is it not far more likely that he 
found all the indulgences which money could buy and the 
rules of the prison would allow ? Bunyan is not himself 
responsible for these wild legends. Their real character 
appears more clearly when we observe how he was oc- 
cupied during these years. 

Friends, in the first place, had free access to him, and 
strangers who were drawn to him by reputation ; while 
the gaol was considered a private place, and he was al- 



82 BUNYAN. [chap. 

lowed to preach there, at least occasionally, to his fellow- 
prisoners. Charles Doe, a distinguished Nonconformist, 
visited him in his confinement, and has left an account 
of what he saw. " When I was there," he writes, u there 
were about sixty dissenters besides himself, taken but a 
little before at a religious meeting at Kaistor, in the county 
of Bedford, besides two eminent dissenting ministers, Mr. 
Wheeler and Mr. Dun, by which means the prison was 
much crowded. Yet, in the midst of all that hurry, I 
heard Mr. Bunyan both preach and pray with that mighty 
spirit of faith and plerophory of Divine assistance, that 
he made me stand and wonder. Here they could sing 
without fear of being overheard, no informers prowling 
round, and the world shut out." 

This was not all. A fresh and more severe Conventicle 
Act w r as passed in 1670. Attempts were made to levy 
fines in the town of Bedford. There was a riot there. 
The local officers refused to assist in quelling it. The 
shops were shut. Bedford was occupied by soldiers. 
Yet, at this very time, Banyan was again allowed to go 
abroad through general connivance. He spent his nights 
with his family. He even preached now and then in the 
woods. Once, when he had intended to be out for the 
night, information was given to a clerical magistrate in 
the neighbourhood, who disliked him, and a constable was 
sent to ascertain if the prisoners were all within ward. 
Bunyan had received a hint of what was coming. He 
was in his place when the constable came ; and the gov- 
ernor of the gaol is reported to have said to him, " You 
may go out when you please, for you know better when 
to return than I can tell you." Parliament might pass 
laws, but the execution of them depended on the local 
authorities. Before the Declaration of Indulgence, the 



vi.] THE BEDFORD GAOL. 83 

Baptist church in Bedford was reopened. Bunyan, while 
still nominally in confinement, attended its meetings. In 
1671 he became an Elder; in December of that year he 
was chosen Pastor. The question was raised whether, as 
a prisoner, he was eligible. The objection would not have 
been set aside had he been unable to undertake the duties 
of the office. These facts prove conclusively that, for a 
part at least of the twelve years, the imprisonment was 
little more than formal. He could not have been in the 
Bridge gaol when he had sixty fellow-prisoners, and was 
able to preach to them in private. It is unlikely that at 
any time he was made to suffer any greater hardships than 
were absolutely inevitable. 

But whether Bunyan's confinement was severe or easy, 
it was otherwise of inestimable value to him. It gave 
him leisure to read and reflect. Though he preached 
often, yet there must have been intervals, perhaps long in- 
tervals, of compulsory silence. The excitement of per- 
petual speech-making is fatal to the exercise of the higher 
qualities. The periods of calm enabled him to discover 
powers in himself of which he might otherwise have never 
known the existence. Of books he had but few; for a 
time only the Bible and Foxe's Martyrs. But the Bible 
thoroughly known is a literature of itself — the rarest and 
richest in all departments of thought or imagination which 
exists. Foxe's Martyrs, if he had a complete edition of 
it, would have given him a very adequate knowledge of 
history. With those two books he had no cause to com- 
plain of intellectual destitution. He must have read more, 
however. He knew George Herbert — perhaps Spenser — 
perhaps Paradise Lost. But of books, except of the Bible, 
he was at no time a great student. Happily for himself, 
he had no other book of Divinity, and he needed none. 



84 BTJNYAN. [chap. 

His real study was human life as he had seen it, and the 
human heart as he had experienced the workings of it. 
Though he never mastered successfully the art of verse, he 
had other gifts which belong to a true poet. He had im- 
agination, if not of the highest, yet of a very high order. 
He had infinite inventive humour, tenderness, and, better 
than all, powerful masculine sense. To obtain the use of 
these faculties he needed only composure, and this his im- 
prisonment secured for him. He had published several 
theological compositions before his arrest, which have rela- 
tively little value. Those which he wrote in prison — even 
on theological subjects — would alone have made him a rep- 
utation as a Nonconformist divine. In no other writings 
are the peculiar views of Evangelical Calvinism brought 
out more clearly, or with a more heartfelt conviction of 
their truth. They have furnished an arsenal from which 
English Protestant divines have ever since equipped them- 
selves. The most beautiful of them, Grace Abounding to 
the Chief of Sinners, is his own spiritual biography, which 
contains the account of his early history. The first part 
of The Pilgrim's Progress was composed there as an 
amusement. To this, and to his other works which belong 
to literature, I shall return in a future chapter. 

Visitors who saw him in the gaol found his manner and 
presence as impressive as his writings. " He was mild 
and affable in conversation," says one of them, " not given 
to loquacity or to much discourse, unless some urgent oc- 
casion required. It was observed he never spoke of him- 
self or of his talents, but seemed low in his own eyes. 
He was never heard to reproach or revile any, whatever 
injury he received, but rather rebuked those who did so. 
He managed all things with such exactness as if he had 
made it his study not to give offence." 



vi.] THE BEDFORD GAOL. 85 

The final Declaration of Indulgence came at last, bring- 
ing with it the privilege for which Bunyan had fought 
and suffered. Charles II. cared as little for liberty as his 
father or his brother, but he wished to set free the Cath- 
olics, and as a step towards it he conceded a general tol- 
eration to the Protestant Dissenters. Within two years 
of the passing of the Conventicle Act of 1670, this and 
every other penal law against Nonconformists was sus- 
pended. They were allowed to open their " meeting- 
houses" for "worship and devotion," subject only to a 
few easy conditions. The localities were to be specified 
in which chapels were required, and the ministers were to 
receive their licenses from the Crown. To prevent suspi- 
cions, the Roman Catholics were for the present excluded 
from the benefit of the concession. Mass could be said, 
as before, only in private houses. A year later, the Proc- 
lamation was confirmed by Act of Parliament. 

Thus Bunyan's long imprisonment was ended. The 
cause was won. He had been its foremost representative 
and champion, and was one of the first persons to receive 
the benefit of the change of policy. He was now forty- 
four years old. The order for his release was signed on 
May 8, 1672. His license as pastor of the Baptist chapel 
at Bedford was issued on the 9th. He established himself 
in a small house in the town. " When he came abroad," 
says one, " he found his temporal affairs were gone to 
wreck, and he had, as to them, to begin again as if he had 
newly come into the world. But yet he was not destitute 
of friends who had all along supported him with neces- 
saries, and had been very good to his family ; so that by 
their assistance, getting things a little about him again, he 
resolved, as much as possible, to decline worldly business, 
and give himself wholly up to the service of God." As 



86 BUNYAN. [chap. 

much as possible ; but not entirely. In 1685, being afraid 
of a return of persecution, he made over, as a precaution, 
his whole estate to his wife : " All and singular his goods, 
chattels, debts, ready money, plate, rings, household stuff, 
apparel, utensils, brass, pewter, bedding, and all his other 
substance." In this deed he still describes himself as a 
brazier. The language is that of a man in easy, if not 
ample, circumstances. " Though, by reason of losses which 
he sustained by imprisonment," says another biographer, 
"his treasures swelled not to excess, he always had suffi- 
cient to live decently and creditably." His writings and 
his sufferings had made him famous throughout England. 
He became the actual head of the Baptist community. 
Men called him, half in irony, half in seriousness, Bishop 
Bunyan, and he passed the rest of his life honourably and 
innocently, occupied in writing, preaching, district visiting, 
and opening daughter churches. . Happy in his work, hap- 
py in the sense that his influence was daily extending — 
spreading over his own country, and to the far-off settle- 
ments in America, he spent his last years in his own Land 
of Beulah, Doubting Castle out of sight, and the towers 
and minarets of Emmanuel Land growing nearer and clear- 
er as the days went on. 

He had not detected, or at least, at first, he did not de- 
tect, the sinister purpose which lay behind the Indulgence. 
The exception of the Roman Catholics gave him perfect 
confidence in the Government, and after his release he 
published a Discourse upon Antichrist, with a preface, in 
which he credited Charles with the most righteous inten- 
tions, and urged his countrymen to be loyal and faithful 
to him. His object in writing it, he said, " was to testify 
his loyalty to the King, his love to the brethren, and his 
service to his country." Antichrist was, of course, the 



vi.] THE BEDFORD GAOL. 87 

Pope, the deadliest of all enemies to vital Christianity. 
To its kings and princes England owed its past deliver- 
ance from him. To kings England must look for his final 
overthrow. 

"As the noble King Henry VIII. did cast down the 
Antichristian worship, so he cast down the laws that held 
it up ; so also did the good King Edward, his son. The 
brave Queen Elizabeth, also, the sister of King Edward, 
left of things of this nature, to her lasting fame, behind 
her." Cromwell he dared not mention — perhaps he did 
not wish to mention him. But he evidently believed that 
there was better hope in Charles Stuart than in conspiracy 
and revolution. 

" Kings," he said, " must be the men that shall down 
with Antichrist, and they shall down with her in God's 
time. God hath begun to draw the hearts of some of 
them from her already, and He will set them in time 
against her round about. If, therefore, they do not that 
work so fast as we would have them, let us exercise pa- 
tience and hope in God. 'Tis a wonder they go as fast as 
they do, since the concerns of whole kingdoms lie upon 
their shoulders, and there are so many Sanballats and To- 
bias's to flatter them and misinform them. Let the King 
have visibly a place in your hearts, and with heart and 
mouth give God thanks for him. He is a better Saviour 
of us than we may Ije aware of, and hath delivered us 
from more deaths than we can tell how to think. We 
are bidden to give God thanks for all men, and in the first 
place for kings, and all that are in authority. Be not an- 
gry with them — no, not in thy thought. But consider, if 
they go not in the work of Reformation so fast as thou 
wouldest they should, the fault may be thine. Know that 
thou also hast thy cold and chill frames of heart, and sit- 



88 BUNYAtf . [chap. vi. 

test still when thou shouldest be up and doing. Pray for 
the long life of the King. Pray that God would give wis- 
dom and judgment to the King; pray that God would 
discern all plots and conspiracies against his person and 
government. I do confess myself one of the old-fashion- 
ed professors that wish to fear God and honour the King. 
I am also for blessing them that curse me, for doing good 
to them that hate me, and for praying for them that de- 
spitefully use me and persecute me ; and I have had more 
peace in the practice of these things than all the world are 
aware of." 

The Stuarts, both Charles and James, were grateful for 
Bunyan's services. The Nonconformists generally went 
up and down in Royal favour; lost their privileges and 
regained them as their help was needed or could be dis- 
pensed with. But Bunyan was never more molested. He 
did what he liked. He preached where he pleased, and no 
one troubled him or called him to account. He was not 
insincere. His constancy in enduring so long an impris- 
onment which a word from him would have ended, lifts 
him beyond the reach of unworthy suspicions. But he 
disapproved always of violent measures. His rule was to 
submit to the law ; and where, as he said, he could not 
obey actively, then to bear with patience the punishment 
that might be inflicted on him. Perhaps he really hoped, 
as long as hope was possible, that good might come out of 
the Stuarts. 



CHAPTER VII. 

LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 

To his contemporaries Bunyan was known as the Noncon- 
formist Martyr, and the greatest living Protestant preacher. 
To us he is mainly interesting through his writings, and 
especially through The Pilgrim's Progress. Although he 
possessed in a remarkable degree the gift of expressing 
himself in written words, he had himself no value for litera- 
ture. He cared simply for spiritual truth, and literature in 
his eyes was only useful as a means of teaching it. Every 
thing with which a reasonable man could concern himself 
was confined within the limits of Christian faith and prac- 
tice. Ambition was folly. Amusement was idle trifling 
in a life so short as man's, and with issues so far-reaching 
depending upon it. To understand, and to make others 
understand, what Christ had done, and what Christ re- 
quired men to do, was the occupation of his whole mind, 
and no object ever held his attention except in connection 
with it. With a purpose so strict, and a theory of relig- 
ion so precise, there is usually little play for imagination 
or feeling. Though we read Protestant theology as a 
duty, we find it as dry in the mouth as sawdust. The 
literature which would please must represent nature, and 
nature refuses to be bound into our dogmatic systems. 
No object can be pictured truly, except by a mind which 
has sympathy with it. Shakspeare no more hates Iago 



90 BUNYAN. [chap. 

than lago hates himself. He allows Iago to exhibit him- 
self in his own way, as nature does. Every character, if 
justice is to be done to it, must be painted at its best, as 
it appears to itself ; and a man impressed deeply with re- 
ligious convictions is generally incapable of the sympathy 
which would give him an insight into what he disapproves 
and dislikes. And ye£ Bunyan, intensely religious as he 
was, and narrow as his theology was, is always human. 
His genius remains fresh and vigorous under the least 
promising conditions. All mankind being under sin to- 
gether, he has no favourites to flatter, no opponents to mis- 
represent. There is a kindliness in his descriptions even 
of the Evil One's attacks upon himself. 

The Pilgrim's Progress, though professedly an allegoric 
story of the Protestant plan of salvation, is conceived in 
the large, wide spirit of humanity itself. Anglo-Catholic 
and Lutheran, Calvinist and Deist can alike read it with 
delight, and find their own theories in it. Even the Ro- 
manist has only to blot out a few paragraphs, and can dis- 
cover no purer model of a Christian life to place in the 
hands of his children. The religion of The Pilgrim'' s 
Progress is the religion which must be always and every- 
where, as long as man believes that he has a soul and is 
responsible for his actions ; and thus it is that, while theo- 
logical folios once devoured as manna from Heaven now 
lie on the bookshelves dead as Egyptian mummies, this 
book is wrought into the mind and memory of every well- 
conditioned English or American child ; while the matured 
man, furnished with all the knowledge which literature can 
teach him, still finds the adventures of Christian as charm- 
ing as the adventures of Ulysses or vEneas. He sees there 
the reflexion of himself, the familiar features of his own 
nature, which remain the same from era to era. Time 



til] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 91 

cannot impair its interest, or intellectual progress make it 
cease to be true to experience. 

But The Pilgrim 's Progress, though the best known, 
is not the only work of imagination which Bunyan pro- 
duced ; he wrote another religious allegory, which Lord 
Macaulay thought would have been, the best of its kind 
in the world if The PilgrirrCs Progress had not existed. 
The Life of Mr. Badman, though now scarcely read at all, 
contains a vivid picture of rough English life in the days of 
Charles II. Bunyan was a poet, too, in the technical sense 
of the word ; and though he disclaimed the name, and 
though rhyme and metre were to him as Saul's armour to 
David, the fine quality of his mind still shows itself in the 
uncongenial accoutrements. 

It has been the fashion to call Bunyan's verse dog- 
gerel ; but no verse is doggerel which has a sincere and 
rational meaning in it. Goethe, who understood his own 
trade, says that the test of poetry is the substance which 
remains when the poetry is reduced to prose. Bunyan 
had infinite invention. His mind was full of objects 
which he had gathered at first-hand, from observation and 
reflection. He had excellent command of the English 
language, and could express what he wished with sharp, 
defined outlines, and without the waste of a word. The 
rhythmical structure of his prose is carefully correct. 
Scarcely a syllable is ever out of place. His ear for verse, 
though less true, is seldom wholly at fault, and, whether in 
prose or verse, he had the superlative merit that he could 
never write nonsense. If one of the motives of poetical 
form be to clothe thought and feeling in the dress in 
which it can be most easily remembered, Bunyan's lines are 
often as successful as the best lines of Quarles or George 
Herbert. Who, for instance, could forget these? — 
G 5 



92 BTJNYAN. [chap. 

" Sin is the worm of hell, the lasting fire : 
Hell would soon lose its heat should sin expire ; 
Better sinless in hell than to be where 
Heaven is, and to be found a sinner there." 

Or these, on persons whom the world calls men of 
spirit : — 

" Though you dare crack a coward's crown, 
Or quarrel for a pin, 
You dare not on the wicked frown, 
Or speak against their sin." 

The Book of Ruth and the History of Joseph, done into 
blank verse, are really beautiful idylls. The substance with 
which he worked, indeed, is so good that there would be a 
difficulty in spoiling it completely ; but the prose of the 
translation in the English Bible, faultless as it is, loses 
nothing in Bunyan's hands, and if we found these poems 
in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should con- 
sider that a difficult task had been accomplished success- 
fully. Bunyan felt, like the translators of the preceding 
century, that the text was sacred, that his duty was to give 
the exact meaning of it, without epithets or ornaments, and 
thus the original grace is completely preserved. 

Of a wholly different kind, and more after Quarles's man- 
ner, is a collection of thoughts in verse, which he calls a 
book for boys and girls. All his observations ran natu- 
rally in one direction ; to minds possessed and governed by 
religion, nature — be their creed what it may — is always a 
parable reflecting back their own views. 

But how neatly expressed are these Meditations upon an 
Egg:— 

" The egg's no chick by falling from a hen. 
Nor man's a Christian till he's born again ; 



vil] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 93 

The egg's at first contained in the shell, 
Men afore grace in sin and darkness dwell ; 
The egg, when laid, by warmth is made a chicken, 
And Christ by grace the dead in sin doth quicken ; 
The egg when first a chick the shell's its prison, 
So flesh to soul who yet with Christ is risen." 

Or this, On a Swallow : — 

" This pretty bird ! Oh, how she flies and sings ; 
But could she do so if she had not wings ? 
Her wings bespeak my faith, her songs my peace ; 
When I believe and sing, my doubtings cease. 

Though the Globe Theatre was, in the opinion of Non- 
conformists, " the heart of Satan's empire," Banyan must 
yet have known something of Shakspeare. In the second 
part of The Pilgr'urCs Progress we find : — 

"Who would true valour see, 
Let him come hither; 
One here will constant be, 
Come wind, come weather." 

The resemblance to the song in As You Like It is too 
near to be accidental : — 

" Who doth ambition shun, 
And loves to be in the sun ; 
Seeking the food he eats, 
And pleased with what he gets, 
Come hither, come hither, come hither. 
Here shall be no enemy, 
Save winter and rough weather." 

Bunyan may, perhaps, have heard the lines, and the 
rhymes may have clung to him without his knowing 
whence they came. But he would never have been heard 
of outside his own communion, if his imagination had 
found no better form of expression for itself than verse, 



94 BUNYAN. [chap. 

His especial gift was for allegory, the single form of im- 
aginative fiction which he would not have considered triv- 
ial, and his especial instrument was plain, unaffected Saxon 
prose. The Holy War is a people's Paradise Lost and 
Paradise Regained in one. The Life of Mr. Badman is 
a didactic tale, describing the career of a vulgar, middle- 
class, unprincipled scoundrel. 

These are properly Bunyan's " works," the results of his 
life, so far as it affects the present generation of English- 
men ; and as they are little known, I shall give an account 
of each of them. 

The Life of Badman is presented as a dialogue between 
Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive. Mr. Wiseman tells the 
story, Mr. Attentive comments upon it. The names recall 
Bunyan's well - known manner. The figures stand for 
typical characters ; but as the dramatis personce of many 
writers of fiction, while professing to be beings of flesh 
and blood, are no more than shadows, so Bunyan's shad- 
ows are solid men, whom we can feel and handle. 

Mr, Badman is, of course, one of the " reprobate." 
Bunyan considered theoretically that a reprobate may to 
outward appearance have the graces of a saint, and that 
there may be little in his conduct to mark his true charac- 
ter. A reprobate may be sorry for his sins, he may repent 
and lead a good life. He may reverence good men, and 
may try to resemble them ; he may pray, and his prayers 
may be answered ; he may havo the spirit of God, and 
may receive another heart, and yet he may be under the 
covenant of works, and may be eternally lost. This Bun- 
yan could say while he was writing theology ; but art has 
its rules as well as its more serious sister, and when ho 
had to draw a living specimen, he drew him as he had 
seen him in his own Bedford neighbourhood. 



vii.] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAX. 95 

Badman showed from childhood a propensity for evil. 
He was so "addicted to lying that his parents could not 
distinguish when he was speaking the truth. He would 
invent, tell, and stand to the lies which he invented, with 
such an audacious face, that one might read in his very 
countenance the symptoms of a hard and desperate heart. 
It was not the fault of his parents; they were much de^ 
jected at the beginnings of their son; nor did he want 
counsel and correction, if that would have made him bet- 
ter ; but all availed nothing." 

Lying was not Badman's only fault. He took to pil- 
fering and stealing. He robbed his neighbours' orchards. 
He picked up money if he found it lying about. Espe> 
cially, Mr. Wiseman notes that he hated Sundays. " Read- 
ing Scriptures, godly conferences, repeating of sermons 
and prayers, were things that he could not away with.'* 
" He was an enemy to that day, because more restraint was 
laid upon him from his own ways than was possible on 
any other." Mr. Wiseman never doubts that the Puritan 
Sunday ought to have been appreciated by little boys. If 
a child disliked it, the cause could only be his own wicked- 
ness. Young Badman " was greatly given also to swearing 
and cursing." " He made no more of it" than Mr. Wise- 
man made " of telling his fingers." " He counted it a 
glory to swear and curse, and it was as natural to him as 
to eat, drink, or sleep." Bunyan, in this description, is 
supposed to have taken the picture from himself. But 
too much may be made of this. He was thinking, per- 
haps, of what he might have been if God's grace had not 
preserved him. He himself was saved. Badman is repre- 
sented as given over from the first. Anecdotes, howev- 
er, are told of contemporary providential judgments upon 
swearers, which had much impressed Biinyan. One was of 



96 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

a certain Dorothy Mately, a woman whose business was to 
wash rubbish at the Derby lead-mines. Dorothy (it was 
in the year when Bunyan was first imprisoned) had stolen 
twopence from the coat of a boy who was working near 
her. When the boy taxed her with having robbed him, 
she wished the ground might swallow her up if she had 
ever touched his money. Presently after, some children, 
who were watching her, saw a movement in the bank on 
which she was standing. They called to her to take care, 
but it was too late. The bank fell in, and she was carried 
down along with it. A man ran to help her, but the sides 
of the pit were crumbling round her : a large stone fell on 
her head ; the rubbish followed, and she was overwhelmed. 
When she was dug out afterwards, the pence were found 
in her pocket. Bunyan was perfectly satisfied that her 
death was supernatural. To discover miracles is not pecul- 
iar to Catholics. They will be found wherever there is an 
active belief in immediate providential government. 

Those more cautious in forming their conclusions will 
think, perhaps, that the woman was working above some 
shaft in the mine, that the crust had suddenly broken, 
and that it would equally have fallen in, when gravitation 
required it to fall, if Dorothy Mately had been a saint. 
They will remember the words about the Tower of Siloam. 
But to return to Badman. 

His father, being unable to manage so unpromising a 
child, bound him out as an apprentice. The master to 
whom he was assigned was as good a man as the father 
could find : upright, God-fearing, and especially consider- 
ate of his servants. He never worked them too hard. He 
left them time to read and pray. He admitted no light or 
mischievous books within his doors. He was not one of 
those whose religion " hung as a cloke in his house, and 



til] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 97 

was never seen on him when he went abroad." His house- 
hold was as well fed and cared for as himself, and he re- 
quired nothing of others of which he did not set them an 
example in his own person. 

This man did his best to reclaim young Badman, and 
was particularly kind to him. But his exertions were 
thrown away. The good-for-nothing youth read filthy ro- 
mances on the sly. He fell asleep in church, or made eyes 
at the pretty girls. He made acquaintance with low com- 
panions. He became profligate, got drunk at ale-houses, 
sold his master's property to get money, or stole it out of 
the cash-box. Thrice he ran away and was taken back 
again. The third time he was allowed to go. "The 
House of Correction would have been the most fit for 
him, but thither his master was loath to send him, for 
the love he bore his father." 

He was again apprenticed ; this time to a master like 
himself. Being wicked, he was given over to wickedness. 
The ways of it were not altogether pleasant. He was fed 
worse and he was worked harder than he had been before ; 
when he stole, or neglected his business, he was beaten. 
He liked his new place, however, better than the old. 
" At least, there was no godliness in the house, which he 
hated worst of all." 

So far, Bunyan's hero was travelling the usual road of 
the Idle Apprentice, and the gallows would have been the 
commonplace ending of it. But this would not have 
answered Bunyan's purpose. He wished to represent the 
good-for-nothing character, under the more instructive as- 
pect of worldly success, which bad men may arrive at as 
well as good, if they are prudent and cunning. Bunyan 
gives his hero every chance. He submits him from the 
first to the best influences ; he creates opportunities for re- 



•98 BUNYAN. [chap. 

pentance at every stage of a long career — opportunities 
which the reprobate nature cannot profit by, yet increases 
its guilt by neglecting. 

Badman's term being out, his father gives him money 
and sets him up as a tradesman on his own account. Mr. 
Attentive considers this to have been a mistake. Mr. 
Wiseman answers that, even in the most desperate cases, 
kindness in parents is more likely to succeed than severity, 
and, if it fails, they will have the less to reproach them- 
selves with. The kindness is, of course, thrown away. 
Badman continues a loose blackguard, extravagant, idle, 
and dissolute. He comes to the edge of ruin. His situa- 
tion obliges him to think; and now the interest of the 
story begins. He must repair his fortune by some means 
or other. The easiest way is by marriage. There was 
a young orphan lady in the neighbourhood, who was well 
off and her own mistress. She was a " professor," eager- 
ly given to religion, and not so wise as she ought to have 
been. Badman pretends to be converted. He reforms, 
or seems to reform. He goes to meeting, sings hymns, 
adopts the most correct form of doctrine, tells the lady 
that he does not want her money, but that he wants a com- 
panion who will go with him along the road to Heaven. 
He was plausible, good-looking, and, to all appearance, as 
absorbed as herself in the one thing needful. The con- 
gregation warn her, but to no purpose. She marries him, 
and finds what she has done too late. In her fortune he 
has all that he wanted. He swears at her, treats her bru- 
tally, brings prostitutes into his house, laughs at her relig- 
ion, and at length orders her to give it up. When she re- 
fuses, Bunyan introduces a special feature of the times, and 
makes Badman threaten to turn informer, and bring her 
favourite minister to gaol. The informers were the natu- 



vii.] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 99 

ral but most accursed products of the Conventicle Acts. 
Popular abhorrence relieved itself by legends of the dread- 
ful judgments which had overtaken these wretches. 

In St. Neots an informer was bitten by a dog. The 
wound gangrened, and the flesh rotted off his bones. In 
Bedford " there was one W. S." (Bunyan probably knew 
him too well), " a man of very wicked life, and he, when 
there seemed to be countenance given it, would needs turn 
informer. Well, so he did, and was as diligent in his busi- 
ness as most of them could be. He would watch at nights, 
climb trees, and range the woods of days, if possible to find 
out the meeters, for then they were forced to meet in the 
fields. Yea, he would curse them bitterly, and swore most 
fearfully what he would do to them when he found them. 
Well, after he had gone on like a Bedlam in his course 
awhile, and had done some mischief to the people, he was 
stricken by the hand of God. He was taken with a falter- 
ing in his speech, a weakness in the back sinews of his 
neck, that ofttimes he held up his head by strength of 
hand. After this his speech went quite away, and he could 
speak no more than a swine or a bear. Like one of them 
he would gruntle and make an ugly noise, according as 
he was offended or pleased, or would have anything done. 
He walked about till God had made a sufficient spectacle 
of his judgments for his sin, and then, on a sudden, he 
was stricken, and died miserably." 

Badman, says Mr. Wiseman, " had malice enough in his 
heart " to turn informer, but he was growing prudent and 
had an eye to the future. As a tradesman he had to live 
by his neighbours. He knew that they would not forgive 
him, so " he had that wit in his anger that he did it not." 
Nothing else was neglected to make the unfortunate wife 
miserable. She bore him seven children, also typical fig- 
5* 



100 BUNYAN. [chap. 

ures. "One was a very gracious child, that loved its moth- 
er dearly. This child Mr. Badman could not abide, and it 
oftenest felt the weight of its father's fingers. Three were 
as bad as himself. The others that remained became a 
kind of mongrel professors, not so bad as their father 
nor so good as their mother, but betwixt them both. 
They had their mother's notions and their father's actions. 
Their father did not like them because they had their 
mother's tongue. Their mother did not like them be- 
cause they had their father's heart and life, nor were they 
fit company for good or bad. They were forced with 
Esau to join in affinity with Ishmael — to wit, to look out 
for a people that were hypocrites like themselves, and 
with them they matched and lived and died." 

Badman, meanwhile, with the help of his wife's fortune, 
grew into an important person, and his character becomes 
a curious study. " He went," we are told, " to school with 
the devil, from his childhood to the end of his life." He 
was shrewd in matters of business, began to extend his op- 
erations, and " drove a great trade." He carried a double 
face. He was evil with the evil. He pretended to be 
good with the good. In religion he affected to be a free- 
thinker, careless of death and judgment, and ridiculing 
those who feared them " as frighted with unseen bug- 
bears." But he wore a mask when it suited him, and ad- 
mired himself for the ease with which he could assume 
whatever aspect was convenient. "I can be religious and 
irreligious," he said ; " I can be anything or nothing. I 
can swear, and speak against swearing. I can lie, and 
speak against lying. I can drink, wench, be unclean, and 
defraud, and not be troubled for it. I can enjoy myself, 
and am master of my own ways, not they of me. This 
I have attained with much study, care, and pains." "An 



vil] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 101 

Atheist Badman was, if such a thing as an Atheist could 
be. He was not alone in that mystery. There was abun- 
dance of men of the same mind and the same principle. 
He was only an arch or chief one among them." 

Mr. Badman now took to speculation, which Bunyan's 
knowledge of business enabled him to describe with in- 
structive minuteness. His adventures were on a large 
scale, and by some mistakes and by personal extravagance 
he had nearly ruined himself a second time. In this con- 
dition he discovered a means, generally supposed to be a 
more modern invention, of " getting money by hatfuls. 1 ' 

" He gave a sudden and great rush into several men's 
debts to the value of four or five thousand pounds, driving 
at the same time a very great trade by selling many things 
for less than they cost him, to get him custom and blind 
his creditors' eyes. When he had well feathered his nest 
with other men's goods and money, after a little while he 
breaks ; while he had by craft and knavery made so sure 
of what he had that his creditors could not touch a pen- 
ny. He sends mournful, sugared letters to them, desiring 
them not to be severe with him, for he bore towards all 
men an honest mind, and would pay them as far as he was 
able. He talked of the greatness of the taxes, the badness 
of the times, his losses by bad debts, and he brought them 
to a composition to take five shillings in the pound. His 
release was signed and sealed, and Mr. Badman could now 
put his head out-of-doors again, and be a better man than 
when he shut up shop by several thousands of pounds." 

Twice or three times he repeated the same trick with 
equal success. It is likely enough that Bunyan was draw- 
ing from life, and perhaps from a member of his own con- 
gregation ; for he says that " he had known a professor 
do it." He detested nothing so much as sham religion, 



102 BUNYAN. [chap. 

which was put on as a pretence. "A professor," he ex- 
claims, "and practise such villanies as these! Such an 
one is not worthy the name. Go, professors, go — leave 
off profession, unless you will lead your lives according to 
your profession. Better never profess than make profes- 
sion a stalking-horse to sin, deceit, the devil, and hell." 

Bankruptcy was not the- only art by which Badman 
piled up his fortune. The seventeenth century was not 
so far behind us as we sometimes persuade ourselves. 
"He dealt by deceitful weights and measures. He kept 
weights to buy by, and weights to sell by ; measures to 
buy by, and measures to sell by. Those he bought by 
were too big, and those he sold by were too little. If he 
had to do with other men's weights and measures, he 
could use a thing called sleight of hand. He had the art, 
besides, to misreckon men in their accounts, whether by 
weight or measure or money ; and if a question was made 
of his faithful dealing, he had his servants ready that 
would vouch and swear to his look or word. He would 
sell goods that cost him not the best price by far, for as 
much as he sold his best of all for. He had also a trick 
to mingle his commodity, that that which was bad might 
go off with the least mistrust. If any of his customers 
paid him money, he would call for payment a second 
time, and if they could not produce good and sufficient 
ground of the payment, a hundred to one but they paid 
it again.'" 

"To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dear- 
est," was Mr. Badman's common rule in business. Ac- 
cording to modern political economy, it is the cardinal 
principle of wholesome trade. In Bunyan's opinion it was 
knavery in disguise, and certain to degrade and demoral- 
ise every one who acted upon it. Bun y an had evidently 



vii.] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. B ADM AN. 103 

thought on the subject. Mr. Attentive is made to ob- 
ject : — 

" But you know that there is no settled price set by 
God upon any commodity that is bought or sold under 
the sun ; but all things that we buy and sell do ebb and 
flow as to price, like the tide. How then shall a man of 
tender conscience do, neither to wrong the seller, buyer, 
nor himself in the buying and selling of commodities?" 

Mr. Wiseman answers in the spirit of our old Acts of 
Parliament, before political economy was invented : — 

" Let a man have conscience towards God, charity to 
his neighbours, and moderation in dealing. Let the trades- 
man consider that there is not that in great gettings and 
in abundance which the most of men do suppose ; for all 
that a man has over and above what serves for his present 
necessity and supply serves only to feed the lusts of the 
eye. Be thou confident that God's eyes are upon thy 
ways; that He marks them, writes them down, and seals 
them up in a bag against the time to come. Be sure that 
thou rememberest that thou knowest not the day of thy 
death. Thou shalt have nothing that thou mayest so 
much as carry away in thy hand. Guilt shall go with thee 
if thou hast gotten thy substance dishonestly, and they to 
whom thou shalt leave it shall receive it to their hurt. 
These things duly considered, I will shew thee how thou 
should'st live in the practical part of this ar^. Art thou 
to buy or sell? If thou sellest, do not commend. If thou 
buyest, do not dispraise any otherwise but to give the 
thing that thou hast to do with its just value and worth. 
Art thou a seller, and do things grow cheap ? set not thy 
hand to help or hold them up higher. Art thou a buyer, 
and do things grow dear? use no cunning or deceitful lan^ 
guage to pull them down. Leave things to the Providence 



104 BUNYAN. [chap. 

of God, and do thou with moderation submit to his hand. 
Hurt not thy neighbour by crying out, Scarcity, scarcity ! 
beyond the truth of things. Especially take heed of do- 
ing this by way of a prognostic for time to come. This 
wicked thing may be done by hoarding up (food) when 
the hunger and necessity of the poor calls for it. If things 
rise, do thou be grieved. Be also moderate in all thy sell- 
ings, and be sure let the poor have a pennyworth, and sell 
thy corn to those who are in necessity ; which thou wilt 
do when thou showest mercy to the poor in thy selling to 
him, and when thou undersellest the market for his sake 
because he is poor. This is to buy and sell with a good 
conscience. The buyer thou wrongest not, thy conscience 
thou wrongest not, thyself thou wrongest not, for God will 
surely recompense with thee." 

These views of Bunyan's are at issue with modern 
science, but his principles and ours are each adjusted to 
the objects of desire which good men in those days, and 
good men in ours, have respectively set before themselves. 
Jf wealth means money, as it is now assumed to do, Bun- 
yan is wrong, and modern science right. If wealth means 
moral welfare, then those who aim at it will do well to 
follow Bunyan's advice. It is to be feared that this part 
of his doctrine is less frequently dwelt upon by those who 
profess to admire and follow him, than the theory of im- 
puted righteousness or justification by faith. 

Mr. Badman, by his various ingenuities, became a wealthy 
man. His character as a tradesman could not have been 
a secret from his neighbours, but money and success col- 
oured it over. The world spoke well of him. He be- 
came " proud and haughty," took part in public affairs, 
" counted himself as wise as the wisest in the country, as 
good as the best, and as beautiful as he that had the most 



til] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 105 

of it." "He took great delight in praising himself, and 
as much in the praises that others gave him." " He could 
not abide that any should think themselves above him, or 
that their wit and personage should be by others set be- 
fore his." He had an objection, nevertheless, to being 
called proud, and when Mr. Attentive asked why, his com- 
panion answered with a touch which reminds us of De 
Foe, that " Badman did not tell him the reason. He sup- 
posed it to be that which was common to all vile persons. 
They loved their vice, but cared not to bear its name." 
Badman said he was unwilling to seem singular and fan- 
tastical, and in this way he justified his expensive and lux- 
urious way of living. Singularity of all kinds he affected 
to dislike, and for that reason his special pleasure was to 
note the faults of professors. " If he could get anything 
by the end that had scandal in it — if it did but touch pro- 
fessors, however falsely reported — oh, then he would glory, 
laugh and be glad, and lay it upon the whole party. Hang 
these rogues, he would say, there is not a barrel better her- 
ring in all the holy brotherhood of them. Like to like, 
quote the devil to the collier. This is your precise crew, 
and then he would send them all home with a curse." 

Thus Bunyan developed his specimen scoundrel, till he 
brought him to the high altitudes of worldly prosperity ; 
skilful in every villanous art, skilful equally in keeping 
out of the law's hands, and feared, admired, and respect- 
ed by all his neighbours. The reader who desires to see 
Providence vindicated would now expect to find him 
detected in some crimes by which justice could lay hold, 
and poetical retribution fall upon him in the midst of his 
triumph. An inferior artist would certainly have allowed 
his story to end in this way. But Bunyan, satisfied 
though he was that dramatic judgments did overtake of- 



106 BUNYAN. [chap. 

fenders in this world with direct and startling appropriate- 
ness, was yet aware that it was often otherwise, and that 
the worst fate which could be inflicted on a completely 
worthless person was to allow him to work out his career 
unvisited by any penalties which might have disturbed 
his conscience and occasioned his amendment. He chose 
to make his story natural, and to confine himself to natural 
machinery. The judgment to come Mr. Badman laughed 
at " as old woman's fable," but his courage lasted only as 
long as he was well and strong. One night, as he was 
riding home drunk, his horse fell, and he broke his leg. 
" You would not think," says Mr. Wiseman, " how he 
swore at first. Then, coming to himself, and finding he 
was badly hurt, he cried out, after the manner of such, 
Lord, help me ! Lord, have mercy on me ! good God, deliver 
me ! and the like. He was picked up and taken home, 
where he lay some time. In his pain he called on God ; 
but whether it was that his sin might be pardoned, and 
his soul saved, or whether to be rid of his pain," Mr. Wise- 
man " could not determine." This leads to several stories 
of drunkards which Bunyan clearly believed to be literally 
true. Such facts or legends were the food on which his 
mind had been nourished. They were in the air which 
contemporary England breathed. 

" I have read, in Mr. Clarke's Looking-glass for Sinners, 
Mr. Wiseman said, " that upon a time a certain drunken 
fellow boasted in his cups that there was neither heaven 
nor hell. Also, he said he believed that man had no soul, 
and that for his own part he would sell his soul to any 
that would buy it. Then did one of his companions buy 
it of him for a cup of wine, and presently the devil, in 
man's shape, bought it of that man again at the same 
price ; and so, in the presence of them all, laid hold of the 






til] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 107 

soul-seller, and carried him away through the air, so that 
he was no more heard of." 

Again : 

" There was one at Salisbury drinking and carousing at 
a tavern, and he drank a health to the devil, saying that 
if the devil would not come and pledge him, he could not 
believe that there was either God or devil. Whereupon 
his companions, stricken with fear, hastened out of the 
room ; and presently after, hearing a hideous noise and 
smelling a stinking savour, the vintner ran into the cham- 
ber, and coming in he missed his guest, and found the 
window broken, the iron bars in it bowed and all bloody, 
but the man was never heard of afterwards." 

These visitations were answers to a direct challenge of 
the evil spirit's existence, and were thus easy to be ac- 
counted for. But no devil came for Mr. Badman. He 
clung to his unfortunate, neglected wife. " She became 
his dear wife, his godly wife, his honest wife, his duck, his 
dear and all." He thought he w^as dying, and hell and all 
its horrors rose up before him. " Fear was in his face, 
and in his tossings to and fro he would often say, I am 
undone, I am undone ; my vile life hath undone me !" 
Atheism did not help him. It never helped anyone in 
such extremities, Mr. Wiseman said, as he had known in 
another instance : — 

"There "was a man dwelt about twelve miles off from 
us," he said, " that had so trained up himself in his Athe- 
istical notions, that at last he attempted to write a book 
against Jesus Christ and the Divine authority of the 
Scriptures. I think it was not printed. Well, after many 
days God struck him with sickness, whereof he died. So, 
being sick, and musing of his former doings, the book 

that he had written tore his- conscience as a lion would 
H 



108 BUNYAN. [chap. 

tear a kid. Some of my friends went to see him ; and as 
they were in Lis chamber one day, he hastily called for 
pen and ink and paper, which, when it was given to him, 
he took it and writ to this purpose : " I, such an one in 
such a town, must go to hell-fire for writing a book against 
Jesus Christ." He would have leaped out of the window 
to have killed himself, but was by them prevented of that, 
so he died in his bed by such a death as it was." 

Badman seemed equally miserable. But death -bed 
repentances, as Bunyan sensibly said, were seldom of more 
value than " the howling of a dog." The broken leg was 
set again. The pain of body went, and with it the pain 
of mind. " He was assisted out of his uneasiness," says 
Banyan, with a characteristic hit at the scientific views 
then coming into fashion, " by his doctor," who told him 
that his alarms had come "from an affection of the brain, 
caused by w r ant of sleep ;" " they were nothing but 
vapours and the effects of his distemper." He gathered 
his spirits together, and became the old man once more. 
His poor wife, who had believed him penitent, broke her 
heart, and died of the disappointment. The husband gave 
himself up to loose connections with abandoned women, 
one of whom persuaded him one day, when he was drunk, 
to make her a promise of marriage, and she held him to 
his word. Then retribution came upon him, with the 
coarse commonplace, yet rigid justice which fact really 
deals out. The second bad wife avenged the wrongs of 
the first innocent wife. He was mated with a companion 
" who could fit him with cursing and swearing, give him 
oath for oath, and curse for curse. They would fight, and 
fly at each other like cat and dog." In this condition — 
for Bunyan, before sending his hero to his account, gave 
him a protracted spell of earthly discomforts — they lived 



vii.] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. 109 

sixteen years together. Fortune, who had so long favour- 
ed his speculations, turned her back upon him. Between 
them they " sinned all his wealth away," and at last 
parted "as poor as howlets." 

Then came the end. Badman was still in middle life, 
and had naturally a powerful constitution ; but his " cups 
and his queans" had undermined his strength. Dropsy 
came, and gout, with worse in his bowels, and " on the 
top of them all, as the captain of the men of death that 
came to take him away," consumption. Bunyan was a 
true artist, though he knew nothing of the rules, and was 
not aware that he was an artist at all. He was not to 
be tempted into spoiling a natural story with the melo- 
dramatic horrors of a sinner's death-bed. He had let his 
victim " howl " in the usual way, when he meant him to 
recover. He had now simply to conduct him to the gate 
of the place where he was to receive the reward of his in- 
iquities. It was enough to bring him thither still impeni- 
tent, with the grave solemnity with which a felon is taken 
to execution. 

" As his life was full of sin," says Mr. Wiseman, " so 
his death was without repentance. He had not, in all the 
time of his sickness, a sight and a sense of his sins ; but 
was as much at quiet as if he had never sinned in his life; 
he was as secure as if he had been sinless as an angel. 
When he drew near his end, there was no more alteration 
in him than what was made by his disease upon his body. 
He was the self-same Mr. Badman still, not only in name 
but in condition, and that to the very day of his death 
and the moment in which he died. There seemed not to 
be in it to the standers-by so much as a strong struggle 
of nature. He died like a lamb, or, as men call it, like a 
chrisom child, quietly and without fear." 



110 BUNYAN. [chap. 

To which end of Mr. Badman Bunyan attaches the fol- 
lowing remarks : " If a wicked man, if a man who has lived 
all his days in notorious sin, dies quietly, his quiet dying 
is so far from being a sign of his being saved that it is an 
incontestable proof of his damnation. No man can be 
saved except he repents ; nor can he repent that knows 
not that he is a sinner : and he that knows himself to be 
a sinner will, I warrant him, be molested for his knowledge 
before he can die quietly. I am no admirer of sick-bed 
repentance ; for I think verily it is seldom good for any- 
thing. But I see that he that hath lived in sin and pro- 
faneness all his days, as Badman did, and yet shall die 
quietly — that is, without repentance steps in between his 
life and his death — is assuredly gone to hell. When God 
would show the greatness of his anger against sin and sin- 
ners in one word, He saith, Let them alone ! Let them 
alone — that is, disturb them not. Let them go on with- 
out control. Let the devil enjoy them peaceably. Let 
him carry them out of the world, unconverted, quietly. 
This is the sorest of judgments. I do not say that all 
wicked men that are molested at their death with a sense 
of sin and fear of hell do therefore go to heaven ; for some 
are made to see and are left to despair. But I say there 
is no surer sign of a man's damnation than to die quietly 
after a sinful life — than to sin and die with a heart that 
cannot repent. The opinion, therefore, of the common 
people of this kind of death is frivolous and vain." 

So ends this very remarkable story. It is extremely 
interesting, merely as a picture of vulgar English life in a 
provincial town, such as Bedford was when Bunyan lived 
there. The drawing is so good, the details so minute, the 
conception so unexaggerated, that we are disposed to be- 
lieve that we must have a real history before us. But such 



vii.] LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN. Ill 

a supposition is only a compliment to the skill of the com- 
poser. Banyan's inventive faculty was a spring that never 
ran dry. He had a manner, as I said, like De Foe's, of 
creating the allusion that we are reading realities^ by little 
touches such as " I do not know ;" " He did not tell me 
this ;" or the needless introduction of particulars irrelevant 
to the general plot such as we always stumble on in life, 
and writers of fiction usually omit. Bunyan was never 
prosecuted for libel by Badman's relations, and the char- 
acter is the corresponding contrast to Christian in The 
Pilgrim } s Progress, the pilgrim's journey being in the op- 
posite direction to the other place. Throughout we are 
on the solid earth, amidst real experiences. No demand is 
made on our credulity by Providential interpositions, ex- 
cept in the intercalated anecdotes which do not touch the 
story itself. The wicked man's career is not brought to 
the abrupt or sensational issues so much in favour with or- 
dinary didactic tale- writers. Such issues are the exception, 
not the rule, and the edifying story loses its effect when 
the reader turns from it to actual life, and perceives that 
the majority are not punished in any such way. Bunyan 
conceals nothing, assumes nothing, and exaggerates noth- 
ing. He makes his bad man sharp and shrewd. He al- 
lows sharpness and shrewdness to bring him the rewards 
which such qualities in fact command. Badman is suc- 
cessful, he is powerful ; he enjoys all the pleasures which 
money can buy; his bad wife helps him to ruin, but oth- 
erwise he is not unhappy, and he dies in peace. Bunyan 
has made him a brute, because such men do become 
brutes. It is the real punishment of brutal and selfish 
habits. There the figure stands : a picture of a man in 
the rank of English life with which Bunyan was most 
familiar, travelling along the primrose path to the everlast- 



112 BUNYAN. [chap. vii. 

inor bonfire, as the way to Emmanuel's Land was through 
the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of 
Death. Pleasures are to be found among the primroses, 
such pleasures as a brute can be gratified by. Yet the 
reader feels that, even if there was no bonfire, he would 
still prefer to be with Christian. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



The supernatural has been successfully represented in po- 
etry, painting, or sculpture, only at particular periods of 
human history, and under peculiar mental conditions. The 
artist must himself believe in the supernatural, or his de- 
scription of it will be a sham, without dignity and without 
credibility. He must feel himself able, at the same time, 
to treat the subject which he selects with freedom, throw- 
ing his own mind boldly into it, or he will produce, at 
best, the hard and stiff forms of literal tradition. When 
Benvenuto Cellini was preparing to make an image of the 
Virgin, he declares gravely that Our Lady appeared to 
him, that he might know what she was like ; and so real 
was the apparition that, for many months after, he says 
that his friends, when the room was dark, could see a faint 
aureole about his head. Yet Benvenuto worked as if his 
own brain was partly the author of what he produced, and, 
like other contemporary artists, used his mistresses for his 
models, and was no servile copyist of phantoms seen in 
visions. There is a truth of the imagination, and there is 
a truth of fact, religion hovering between them, translating 
one into the other, turning natural phenomena into the 
activity of personal beings ; or giving earthly names and 
habitations to mere ereatures of fancy. Imagination 



114 BUNYAN. [chap. 

creates a mythology. The priest cakes it and fashions 
out of it a theology, a ritual, or a sacred history. So long 
as the priest can convince the world that he is dealing with 
literal facts he holds reason prisoner, and imagination is 
his servant. In the twilight, when dawn is coming near 
but has not yet come ; when the uncertain nature of the 
legend is felt, thougb not intelligently discerned — imagi- 
nation is the first to resume its liberty ; it takes possession 
of its own inheritance, it dreams of its gods and. demi- 
gods, as Benevenuto dreamt of the Virgin, and it re-shapes 
the priest's traditions in noble and beautiful forms. Homer 
and the Greek dramatists would not have dared to bring 
the gods upon the stage so freely had they believed Zeus 
and Apollo were living persons, like the man in the next 
street, who might call the poet to account for what they 
were made to do and say ; but neither, on the other hand v 
could they have been actively conscious that Zeus and 
Apollo were apparitions, which had no existence except in 
their own brains. 

The condition is extremely peculiar. It can exist only 
in certain epochs, and in its nature is necessarily transitory. 
Where belief is consciously gone, the artist has no rever- 
ence for his work, and, therefore, can inspire none. The 
greatest genius in the world could not reproduce another 
Athene like that of Phidias. But neither must the belief 
be too complete. The poet's tongue stammers when he 
would bring beings before us who, though invisible, are 
awful personal existences, in whose stupendous presence 
we one day expect to stand. As long as the conviction 
survives that he is dealing with literal truths, he is safe 
only while he follows with shoeless feet the letter of the 
tradition. He dares not step beyond, lest he degrade the 
Infinite to the human level, and if he is wke he prefers to 



viil] "THE HOLY WAR." 115 

content himself with humbler subjects. A Christian artist 
can represent Jesus Christ as a man because He was a man, 
and because the details of the Gospel history leave room 
for the imagination to work. To represent Christ as the 
Eternal Son in heaven, to bring before us the Persons of 
the Trinity, consulting, planning, and reasoning, to take 
us into their everlasting Council-chamber, as Homer takes 
us into Olympus, will be possible only when Christianity 
ceases to be regarded as a history of true facts. Till then 
it is a trespass beyond the permitted limits, and revolts us 
by the inadequacy of the result. Either the artist fails al- 
together by attempting the impossible, or those whom he 
addresses are themselves intellectually injured by an un- 
real treatment of truths hitherto sacred. They confound 
the representation with its object, and regard the whole of 
it as unreal together. 

These observations apply most immediately to Milton's 
Paradise Lost, and are meant to explain the unsatisfactori- 
ness of it. Milton himself was only partially emancipated 
from the bondage of the letter ; half in earth, half "' paw- 
ing to get free," like his own lion. The war in heaven, 
the fall of the rebel angels, the horrid splendours of Pan- 
demonium seem legitimate subjects for Christian poetry. 
They stand for something which we regard as real, yet we 
are not bound to any actual opinions about them. Satan 
has no claim on reverential abstinence ; and Paradise and 
the Fall of Man are perhaps sufficiently mythic to permit 
poets to take certain liberties with them. But even so far 
Milton has not entirely succeeded. His wars of the angels 
are shadowy. They have no substance, like the battles of 
Greeks and Trojans, or Centaurs and Lapithae ; and Satan 
could not be made interesting without touches of a nobler 
nature — that is, without ceasing to be the Satan of the 
6 



116 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

Christian religion. But this is not the worst. When we 
are carried up into heaven, and hear the persons of the 
Trinity conversing on the mischiefs which have crept into 
the universe, and planning remedies and schemes of salva- 
tion like Puritan divines, we turn away incredulous and re- 
sentful. Theologians may form such theories for them- 
selves, if not wisely, yet without offence. They may study 
the world in which they are placed with the light which 
can be thrown upon it by the book which they call the 
Word of God. They may form their conclusions, invent 
their schemes of doctrine, and commend to their flocks the 
interpretation of the mystery at which they have arrived. 
The cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic astronomers 
were imperfect hypotheses, but they were stages on which 
the mind could rest for a more complete examination of 
the celestial phenomena. But the poet does not offer us 
phrases and formulas ; he presents to us personalities, liv- 
ing and active, influenced by emotions and reasoning from 
premises ; and when the unlimited and incomprehensible 
Being whose attributes are infinite, of whom, from the in- 
adequacy of our ideas, we can only speak in negatives, is 
brought on the stage to talk like an ordinary man, we 
feel that Milton has mistaken the necessary limits of his 
art. 

When Faust claims affinity with the Erdgeist, the spirit 
tells him to seek affinities with beings which he can com- 
prehend. The commandment which forbade the represen- 
tation of God in a bodily form, forbids the poet equally to 
make God describe his feelings and his purposes. Where 
the poet would create a character he must himself com- 
prehend it first to its inmost fibre. He cannot compre- 
hend his own Creator. Admire as we may Paradise Lost ; 
try as we may to admire Paradise Regained ; acknowledge 



viii.] "THE HOLY WAR." 117 

as we must the splendour of the imagery and the stately 
march of the verse — there comes upon us irresistibly a 
sense of the unfitness of the subject for Milton's treatment 
of it. If the story which he tells us is true, it is too mo- 
mentous to be played with in poetry. We prefer to hear 
it in plain prose, with a minimum of ornament and the ut- 
most possible precision of statement. Milton himself had 
not arrived at thinking it to be a legend, a picture, like a 
Greek Mythology. His poem falls between two modes of 
treatment and two conceptions of truth ; we wonder, we 
recite, we applaud, but something comes in between our 
minds and a full enjoyment, and it will not satisfy us bet- 
ter as time goes on. 

The same objection applies to The Holy War of Bun- 
yan. It is, as I said, a people's version of the same series 
of subjects — the creation of man, the fall of man, his re- 
demption, his ingratitude, his lapse, and again his restora- 
tion. The chief figures are the same, the action is the 
same, though more varied and complicated, and the gen- 
eral effect is unsatisfactory from the same cause. Prose 
is less ambitious than poetry. There is an absence of at- 
tempts at grand effects. There is no effort after sublimi- 
ty, and there is consequently a lighter sense of incongrui- 
ty in the failure to reach it. On the other hand, there is 
the greater fulness of detail so characteristic of Bunyan's 
manner ; and fulness of detail on a theme so far beyond 
our understanding is as dangerous as vague grandilo- 
quence. In The Pilgrim's Progress we are among genu- 
ine human beings. The reader knows the road too well 
which Christian follows. He has struggled with him in 
the Slough of Despond. He has shuddered with him in 
the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He has groaned 
with him in the dungeons of Doubting Castle. He has 



118 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

encountered on his journey the same fellow-travellers. 
Who does not know Mr. Pliable, Mr. Obstinate, Mr. Fac- 
ing-both-ways, Mr. Feeble Mind, and all the rest? They 
are representative realities, flesh of our flesh, and bone of 
our bone. " If we prick them, they bleed ; if we tickle 
them, they laugh," or they make us laugh. " They are 
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer " as 
we are. The human actors in The Holy War are parts' 
of men — special virtues, special vices : allegories in fact as ' 
well as in name, which all Bunyan's genius can only occa- 
sionally substantiate into persons. The plot of The Pil- 
grim 's Progress is simple. The Holy War is prolonged 
through endless vicissitudes, with a doubtful issue after all, 
and the incomprehensibility of the Being who allows Satan 
to defy him so long and so successfully is unpleasantly and 
harshly brought home to us. True, it is so in life. Evil 
remains after all that has been done for us. But life is 
confessedly a mystery. The Holy War professes to inter- 
pret the mystery, and only restates the problem in a more 
elaborate form. Man Friday, on reading it, would have 
asked, even more emphatically, "Why God not kill the 
devil ?" and Robinson Crusoe would have found no assist- 
ance in answering him. For these reasons I cannot agree 
with Macaulay in thinking that, if there had been no Pil- 
grim's Progress, The Holy War would have been the first 
of religious allegories. We may admire the workmanship, 
but the same undefined sense of unreality which pursues 
us through Milton's epic would have interfered equally 
with the acceptance of this. The question to us is if the 
facts are true. If true, they require no allegories to touch 
either our hearts or our intellects. 

The Holy War would have entitled Bunyan to a place 
among the masters of English literature. It would never 



viii.] "THE HOLY WAR." 119 

have made his name a household word in every English- 
speaking family on the globe. 

The story, which I shall try to tell in an abridged form, 
is introduced by a short prefatory poem. Works of fan- 
cy, Bunyan tells us, are of many sorts, according to the 
author's humour. For himself he says to his reader — 

" I have something else to do 
Than write vain stories thus to trouble you. 
What here I say some men do know too well ; 
They can with tears and joy the story tell. 
The town of Mansoul is well known to many, 
Nor are her troubles doubted of by any 
That are acquainted with those histories 
That Mansoul and her wars anatomize. 

" Then lend thine ears to what I do relate 
Touching the town of Mansoul and her state ; 
How she was lost, took captive, made a slave, 
And how against him set that should her save, 
Yea, how by hostile ways she did oppose 
Her Lord, and with his enemy did close, 
For they are true ; he that will them deny 
Must needs the best of records vilify. 

" For my part, I myself was in the town 
Both when 'twas set up and when pulling down. 
I saw Diabolus in his possession, 
And Mansoul also under his oppression : 
Yea, I was there when she him owned for Lord, 
And to him did submit with one accord. 

" When Mansoul trampled upon things divine, 
And wallowed in filth as doth a swine, 
When she betook herself unto his arms, 
Fought her Emmanuel, despised his charms ; 
Then was I there, and did rejoice to see 
Diabolus and Mansoul so agree. 



120 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

" Let no man count me then a fable-maker, 
Nor make my name or credit a partaker 
Of their derision. What is here in view 
Of mine own knowledge I dare say is true." 

At setting out we are introduced into the famous con- 
tinent of " Universe," a large and spacious country lying 
between the two poles — "the people of it not all of one 
complexion nor yet of one language, mode or way of re- 
ligion, but differing as much as the planets themselves; 
some right, some wrong, even as it may happen to be." 

In this country of " Universe " was a fair and delicate 
town and corporation called " Mansoul," a town for its 
building so curious, for its situation so commodious, for 
hs privileges so advantageous, that with reference to its 
original (state) there was not its equal under heaven. The 
first founder was Shaddai, who built it for his own delight. 
In the midst of the town was a famous and stately palace 
vhich Shaddai intended for himself. 1 He had no inten- 
tion of allowing strangers to intrude there. And the pe- 
culiarity of the place was that the walls of Mansoul 2 could 
never be broken down or hurt unless the townsmen con- 
sented. Mansoul had five gates which, in like manner, 
could only be forced if those within allowed it. These 
gates were Eargate, Eyegate, Mouthgate, Nosegate, and 
Feelgate. Thus provided, Mansoul was at first all that its 
founder could desire. It had the most excellent laws in 
the world. There was not a rogue or a rascal inside its 
whole precincts. The inhabitants were all true men. 

Now there was a certain giant named Diabolus — king 
of the blacks or negroes, as Banyan noticeably calls them 

1 Bunyan says, in a marginal note, that by this palace he means 
the heart. 

2 The body. 



Tin.] "THE HOLY WAR." 121 

— the negroes standing for sinners or fallen angels. Diab- 
olus had once been a serTant of Shaddai, one of the chief 
in his territories. Pride and ambition had led him to 
aspire to the crown which was settled on Shaddai's Son. 
He had formed a conspiracy and planned a revolution. 
Shaddai and his Son, " being all eye," easily detected the 
plot. Diabolus and his crew were bound in chains, ban- 
ished, and thrown into a pit, there to " abide for ever." 
This was their sentence ; but out of the pit, in spite of it, 
they in some way contrived to escape. They ranged about 
full of malice against Shaddai, and looking for means to 
injure him. They came at last on Mansoul. They deter- 
mined to take it, and called a council to consider how it 
could best be done. Diabolus was aware of the condition 
that no one could enter without the inhabitants' consent. 
Alecto, Apollyon, Beelzebub, Lucifer (Pagan and Christian 
demons intermixed indifferently) gave their several opin- 
ions. Diabolus at length, at Lucifer's suggestion, decided 
to assume the shape of one of the creatures over which 
Mansoul had dominion ; and he selected as the fittest that 
of a snake, which at that time was in great favour with the 
people as both harmless and wise. 

The population of Mansoul were simple, innocent folks 
who believed everything that was said to them. Force, 
however, might be necessary, as well as cunning, and the 
Tisiphone, a fury of the Lakes, was required to assist. 
The attempt was to be made at Eargate. A certain Cap- 
tain Resistance was in charge of this gate, whom Diabolus 
feared more than any one in the place. Tisiphone was to 
shoot him. 

The plans being all laid, Diabolus in his snake's dress 
approached the wall, accompanied by one 111 Pause, a fa- 
mous orator, the Fury following behind. He asked for a 



122 BUNYAN. [chap. 

parley with the heads of the town. Captain Resistance, 
two of the great nobles, Lord Innocent, and Lord Will 
be Will, with Mr. Conscience, the Recorder, and Lord Un- 
derstanding, the Lord Mayor, came to the gate to see what 
he wanted. Lord Will be Will plays a prominent part in 
the drama both for good and evil. He is neither Free 
Will, nor Wilfulness, nor Inclination, but the quality which 
metaphysicians and theologians agree in describing as " the 
Will." " The Will " simply — a subtle something of great 
importance; but what it is they have never been able to 
explain. 

Lord Will be Will inquired Diabolus's business. Diab- 
olus, " meek as a lamb," said he was a neighbour of theirs. 
He had observed with distress that they were living in a 
state of slavery, and he wished to help them to be free. 
Shaddai was no doubt a great prince, but he was an arbi- 
trary despot. There was no liberty where the laws were 
unreasonable, and Shaddai's laws were the reverse of rea- 
sonable. They had a fruit growing among them, in Man- 
soul, which they had but to eat to become wise. Knowl- 
edge was well known to be the best of possessions. Knowl- 
edge was freedom ; ignorance was bondage ; and yet 
Shaddai had forbidden them to touch this precious fruit. 

At that moment Captain Resistance fell dead, pierced 
by an arrrow from Tisiphone. Ill Pause made a flowing 
speech, in the midst of which Lord Innocent fell also, 
either through a blow from Diabolus, or " overpowered by 
the stinking breath of the old villain 111 Pause." The peo- 
ple flew upon the apple-tree ; Eargate and Eyegate were 
thrown open, and Diabolus was invited to come in ; when 
at once he became King of Mansoul, and established him- 
self in the castle, 1 

1 The heart. 



viii.] "THE HOLY WAR." 123 

The magistrates were immediately changed. Lord Un- 
derstanding ceased to be Lord Mayor. Mr. Conscience 
was no longer left as Recorder. Diabolus built up a wall 
in front of Lord Understanding's palace, and shut off the 
light, " so that till Mansoul was delivered the old Lord 
Mayor was rather an impediment than an advantage to that 
famous town." Diabolus tried long to bring " Conscience " 
over to his side, but never quite succeeded. The Recorder 
became greatly corrupted, but he could not be prevented 
from now and then remembering Shaddai ; and when the 
fit was on him he would shake the town with his excla- 
mations. Diabolus, therefore, had to try other methods 
with him. "He had a way to make the old gentleman, 
when he was merry, unsay and deny what in his fits he 
had affirmed; and this was the next way to make him 
ridiculous, and to cause that no man should regard him." 
To make all secure, Diabolus often said, " Oh, Mansoul, 
consider that, notwithstanding the old gentleman's rage 
and the rattle of the high, thundering words, you hear 
nothing of Shaddai himself." The Recorder had pretend- 
ed that the voice of the Lord was speaking in him. Had 
this been so, Diabolus argued that the Lord would have 
done more than speak. " Shaddai," he said, " valued not 
the loss nor the rebellion of Mansoul, nor would he trouble 
himself with calling his town to a reckoning." 

In this way the Recorder came to be generally hated, 
and more than once the people would have destroyed him. 
Happily his house was a castle near the water-works. When 
the rabble pursued him, he would pull up the sluices, 1 let 
in the flood, and drown all about him. 

Lord Will be Will, on the other hand, " as high born 
as any in Mansoul," became Diabolus's principal minister. 

1 Fears. 
I 6* 



124 BUNYAN. [chap. 

He had been the first to propose admitting Diabolus, and 
he was made Captain of the Castle, Governor of the Wall, 
and Keeper' of the Gates. Will be Will had a clerk named 
Mr. Mind, a man every way like his master, and Mansonl 
was thus brought " under the lusts" of Will and Intellect. 
Mr. Mind had in his house some old rent and torn parch- 
ments of the law of Shaddai. The Recorder had some 
more in his study ; but to these Will be Will paid no at- 
tention, and surrounded himself with officials who were all 
in Diabolus's interest. He had as deputy one Mr. Affec- 
tion, " much debauched in his principles, so that he was 
called Vile Affection. 1 ' Vile Affection married Mr. Mind's 
daughter, Carnal Lust, by whom he had three sons — Im- 
pudent, Black Mouth, and Plate Reproof ; and three daugh- 
ters — Scorn Truth, Slight Good, and Revenge. All traces 
of Shaddai were now swept away. His image, which had 
stood in the market-place, was taken down, and an artist 
called Mr. No Truth was employed to set up the image of 
Diabolus in place of it. Lord Lustings — " who never sa- 
voured good, but evil " — was chosen for the new Lord 
Mayor. Mr. Forget Good was appointed Recorder. There 
were new burgesses and aldermen, all with appropriate 
names, for which Bun van was never at a loss — Mr. Incre- 
dulity, Mr. Haughty, Mr. Swearing, Mr. Hardheart, Mr. Piti- 
less, Mr. Fury, Mr. No Truth, Mr. Stand to Lies, Mr. False- 
peace, Mr. Drunkenness, Mr. Cheating, Mr. Atheism, and 
another ; thirteen of them in all. Mr. Incredulity was 
the eldest, Mr. Atheism the youngest in the company — a 
shrewd and correct arrangement. Diabolus, on his part, 
set to work to fortify Mansoul. He built three fortresses 
— " The Hold of Defiance " at Eyegate, " that the light 
might be darkened there;" "Midnight Hold" near the old 
Castle, to keep Mansoul from knowledge of itself ; and 



viii.] "THE HOLY WAR." 125 

"Sweet Sin Hold" in the market-place, that there might 
be no desire of good there. These strongholds being 
established and garrisoned, Diabolus thought that he had 
made his conquest secure. 

So far the story runs on firmly and clearly. It is vivid, 
consistent in itself, and held well within the limits of hu- 
man nature and experience. But, like Milton, Bunyan is 
now, by the exigencies of the situation, forced upon more 
perilous ground. He carries us into the presence of Shad- 
dai himself, at the time when the loss of Mansoul was re- 
ported in heaven. 

The king, his son, his high lords, his chief captains and 
nobles were all assembled to hear. There was universal 
grief, in which the king and his son shared, or rather seem- 
ed to share — for at once the drama of the Fall of Mankind 
becomes no better than a Mystery Play. " Shaddai and 
his son had foreseen it all long before, and had provided 
for the relief of Mansoul, though they told not everybody 
thereof — but because they would have a share in condoling 
of the misery of Mansoul they did, and that at the rate of 
the highest degree, bewail the losing of Mansoul " — " thus 
to show their love and compassion." 

Paradise Lost was published at the time that Bunyan 
wrote this passage. If he had not seen it, the coincidences 
of treatment are singularly curious. It is equally singular, 
if he had seen it, that Milton should not here at least have 
taught him to avoid making the Almighty into a stage 
actor. The Father and Son consult how " to do what they 
had designed before." They decide that at a certain time, 
wilich they preordain, the Son, " a sweet and comely per- 
son," shall make a journey into the Universe, and lay a 
foundation there for Mansoul's deliverance. Milton of- 
fends in the scene less than Bunyan ; but Milton cannot 



126 BUN YAK [chap. 

persuade us that it is one which should have been repre- 
sented by either of them. They should have left " plans 
of salvation" to eloquent orators in the pulpit. 

Though the day of deliverance by the method proposed 
was as yet far off, the war against Diabolus was to be 
commenced immediately. The Lord Chief Secretary was 
ordered to put in writing Shaddai's intentions, and cause 
them to be published. 1 Mansoul, it was announced, was 
to be put into a better condition than it was in before 
Diabolus took it. 

The report of the Council in Heaven was brought to 
Diabolus, who took his measures accordingly, Lord Will 
be Will standing by him and executing all his directions. 
Mansoul was forbidden to read Shaddai's proclamation. 
Diabolus imposed a great oath on the townspeople never to 
desert him ; he believed that if they entered into a cove- 
nant of this kind Shaddai could not absolve them from it. 
They " swallowed the engagement as if it had been a sprat 
in the mouth of a whale." Being now Diabolus's trusty 
children, he gave them leave " to do whatever their appe- 
tites prompted to do." They would thus involve them- 
selves in all kinds of wickedness, and Shaddai's son " being 
Holy " would be less likely to interest himself for them. 
When they had in this way put themselves, as Diabolus 
hoped, beyond reach of mercy, he informed them that 
Shaddai was raising an army to destroy the town. No 
quarter would be given, and unless they defended them- 
selves like men they would all be made slaves. Their 
spirit being roused, he armed them with the shield of un- 
belief, " calling into question the truth of the Word." He 
gave them a helmet of hope — " hope of doing well at last, 
whatever lives they might lead ;" for a breastplate a heart 
1 The Scriptures. 



vnr.] "THE HOLY WAR." 12? 

as hard as iron, " most necessary for all that hated Shad- 
dai;" and another piece of most excellent armour, "a 
drunken and prayerless spirit that scorned to cry for 
mercy." Shaddai, on his side, had also prepared his forces. 
He will not as yet send his son. The first expedition was 
to fail, and was meant to fail* The object was to try 
whether Mansoul would return to obedience. And vet 
Shaddai knew that it would not return to obedience. Bun- 
yan w r as too ambitious to explain the inexplicable. Fifty 
thousand warriors were collected, all chosen by Shaddai 
himself. There were four leaders — Captain Boanerges, 
Captain Conviction, Captain Judgment, and Captain Exe^ 
cution — the martial saints, with whom Macaulay thinks 
Bunyan made acquaintance when he served, if serve he 
did, with Fairfax. The bearings on their banners were 
three black thunderbolts — the Book of the Law, wide 
open, with a flame of fire bursting from it; a burn- 
ing, fiery furnace ; and a fruitless tree with an axe 
at its root. These emblems represent the terrors of 
Mount Sinai, the covenant of works which was not to 
prevail. 

The captains come to the walls of Mansoul, and sum- 
mon the town to surrender. Their words " beat against 
Eargate, but without force to break it open." The new 
officials answer the challenge with defiance. Lord In- 
credulity knows not by what right Shaddai invades their 
country. Lord Will be Will and Mr. Forget Good warn 
them to be off before they rouse Diabolus. The towns- 
people ring the bells and dance on the walls. Will be 
Will double-bars the gates. Bunyan's genius is at its best 
in scenes of this kind. " Old Mr. Prejudice, with sixty 
deaf men," is appointed to take charge of Eargate. At 
Eargate, too, are planted two guns, called Highmind and 



128 BUNYAN. [chap. 

Heady, "cast in the earth by Diabolus's head founder, 
whose name was Mr. Puffup." 

The fighting begins, but the covenant of works makes 
little progress. Shaddai's captains, when advancing on 
Mansoul, had fallen in with " three young fellows of 
promising appearance" who volunteered to go with them 
— " Mr. Tradition, Mr. Human Wisdom, and Mr. Man's In- 
vention." They were allowed to join, and were placed in 
positions of trust, the captains of the covenant being ap- 
parently wanting in discernment. They were taken pris- 
oners in the first skirmish, and immediately changed sides 
and went over to Diabolus. More battles follow. The 
roof of the Lord Mayor's house is beaten in. The law is 
not wholly ineffectual. Six of the Aldermen, the grosser 
moral sins — Swearing, Stand to Lies, Drunkenness, Cheat- 
ing, and others — are overcome and killed. Diabolus grows 
uneasy, and loses his sleep. Old Conscience begins to talk 
again. A party forms in the town in favour of surrender, 
and Mr. Parley is sent to Eargate to treat for terms. The 
spiritual sins — False Peace, Unbelief, Haughtiness, Athe- 
ism — are still unsubdued and vigorous. The conditions 
offered are that Incredulity, Forget Good, and Will be 
Will shall retain their offices ; Mansoul shall be continued 
in all the liberties which it enjoys under Diabolus ; and a 
further touch is added which shows how little Bunyan 
sympathised with modern notions of the beauty of self- 
government. No new law or officer shall have any power 
in Mansoul without the people's consent. 

Boanerges will agree to no conditions with rebels. In- 
credulity and Will be Will advise the people to stand by 
their rights, and refuse to submit to " unlimited " power. 
The war goes on, and Incredulity is made Diabolus's uni- 
versal deputy. Conscience and Understanding, the old 



vm.] "THE HOLY WAR." 129 

Recorder and Mayor, raise a mutiny, and there is a fight 
in the streets. Conscience is knocked down by a Dia- 
bolonian called Mr. Benumming. Understanding had a 
narrow escape from being shot. On the other hand, Mr. 
Mind, who had come over to the Conservative side, laid 
about bravely, tumbled old Mr. Prejudice into the dirt, and 
kicked him where he lay. Even Will be Will seemed to 
be wavering in his allegiance to Diabolus. "He smiled, 
and did not seem to take one side more than another." 
The rising, however, is put down — Understanding and 
Conscience are imprisoned, and Mansoul hardens its heart, 
chiefly " being in dread of slavery," and thinking liberty 
too flue a thing to be surrendered. 

Shaddai's four captains find that they can do no more. 
The covenant of works will not answer. They send home 
a petition, "by the hand 'of that good man Mr. Love to 
Mansoul," to beg that some new general may come to lead 
them. The preordained time has now arrived, and Em- 
manuel himself is to take the command. He, too, selects 
his captains — Credence and Good Hope, Charity, and In- 
nocence, and Patience ; and the captains have their squires, 
the counterparts of themselves — Promise and Expectation, 
Pitiful, Harmless, and Suffer Long. Emmanuel's armour 
shines like the sun. He has forty-four battering-rams and 
twenty-two slings — the sixty-six books of the Bible — each 
made of pure gold. He throws up mounds and trenches, 
and arms them with his rams, five of the largest being 
planted on Mount Hearken, over against Eargate. Bun- 
van was too reverent to imitate the Mystery Plays, and 
introduce a Mount Calvary with the central sacrifice 
upon it. The sacrifice is supposed to have been already 
offered elsewhere. Emmanuel offers mercy to Mansoul, 
and when it is rejected he threatens judgment and terror. 



130 BUN YAK [chap. 

Diabolus, being wiser than man, is made to know that his 
hour is approaching. He goes in person to Mouthgate to 
protest and remonstrate. He asks why Emmanuel is come 
to torment him. Mansoul has disowned Shaddai and 
sworn allegiance to himself. He begs Emmanuel to leave 
him to rule his own subjects in peace. 

Emmanuel tells him "he is a thief and a liar." 
" When," Emmanuel is made to say, " Mansoul sinned by 
hearkening to thy lie, I put in and became a surety to my 
Father, body for body, soul for soul, that I would make 
amends for Mansoul's transgressions, and my Father did 
accept thereof. So, when the time appointed was come, I 
gave body for body, soul for soul, life for life, blood for 
blood, and so redeemed my beloved Mansoul. My Father's 
law and justice, that were both concerned in the threaten- 
ing upon transgression, are both now satisfied, and very 
well content that Mansoul should be delivered." 

Even against its deliverers, Mansoul was defended by 
the original condition of its constitution. There was no 
way into it but through the gates. Diabolus, feeling that 
Emmanuel still had difficulties before him, withdrew from 
the wall, and sent a messenger, Mr. Loth to Stoop, to offer 
alternative terms, to one or other of which he thought 
Emmanuel might consent. Emmanuel might be titular 
sovereign of all Mansoul, if Diabolus might keep the ad- 
ministration of part of it. If this could not be, Diabolus 
requested to be allowed to reside in Mansoul as a private 
person. If Emmanuel insisted on his own personal ex- 
clusion, at least he expected that his friends and kin- 
dred might continue to live there, and that he himself 
might now and then write them letters, and send them 
presents and messages, "in remembrance of the merry 
times they had enjoyed together." Finally, he would like 



vm.] "THE HOLY WAR." 131 

to be consulted occasionally when an)* difficulties arose in 
Mansoul. 

It will be seen that in the end Mansoul was, in fact, left 
liable to communications from Diabolus very much of this 
kind. Emmanuel's answer, however, is a peremptory No. 
Diabolus must take himself away, and no more must be 
heard of him. Seeing that there was no other resource, 
Diabolus resolves to fight it out. There is a great battle 
under the walls, with some losses on Emmanuel's side, even 
Captain Conviction receiving three wounds in the mouth. 
The shots from the gold slings mow down whole ranks of 
Diabolonians. Mr. Love no Good and Mr. Ill Pause are 
wounded. Old Prejudice and Mr. Anything run away. 
Lord Wili be Will, who still fought for Diabolus, was 
never so daunted in his life : " he was hurt in the leg, and 
limped." 

Diabolus, when the fight was over, came again to the 
gate with fresh proposals to Emmanuel. " I," he said, 
" will persuade Mansoul to receive thee for their Lord, and 
I know that they will do it the sooner when they under- 
stand that I am thy deputy. I will show them wherein 
they have erred, and that transgression stands in the way 
to life. I will show them the Holy Law to which they 
must conform, even that which they have broken. I will 
press upon them the necessity of a reformation according 
to thy law. At my own cost I will set up and maintain 
a sufficient ministry, besides lecturers, in Mansoul." This 
obviously means the Established Church. Unable to keep 
mankind directly in his own service, the devil offers to 
entangle them in the covenant of works, of which the 
Church of England was the representative. Emmanuel 
rebukes him for his guile and deceit. "I will govern 
Mansoul," he says, " by new laws, new officers, new mo- 



132 BUNYAN. [chap. 

lives, and new ways. I will pull down ^he town and build 
it again, and it shall be as though it had not been, and it 
shall be the glory of the whole universe." 

A second battle follows. Eargate is beaten in. The 
Prince's army enters and advances as far as the old Re- 
corder's house, where they knock and demand entrance. 
"The old gentleman, not fully knowing their design, had 
kept his gates shut all the time of the fight. He as yet 
knew nothing of the great designs of Emmanuel, and 
could not tell what to think." The door is violently 
broken open, and the house is made Emmanuel's head- 
quarters. The townspeople, with Conscience and Under- 
standing at their head, petition that their lives may be 
spared; but Emmanuel gives no answer, Captain Boa- 
nerges and Captain Conviction carrying terror into all 
hearts. Diabolus, the cause of all the mischief, had re- 
treated into the castle.' He came out at last, and sur- 
rendered, and in dramatic fitness he clearly ought now to 
have been made away with in a complete manner. Un- 
fortunately, this could not be done. He was stripped of 
his armour, bound to Emmanuel's chariot-wheels, and thus 
turned out of Mansoul " into parched places in a salt land, 
where he might seek rest and find none." The salt land 
proved as insecure a prison for this embarrassing being as 
the pit where he was to have abode forever. 

Meanwhile, Mansoul being brought upon its knees, the 
inhabitants were summoned into the castle -yard, when 
Conscience, Understanding, and Will be Will were com- 
mitted to ward. They and the rest again prayed for 
mercy, but again without effect. Emmanuel was silent. 
They drew another petition, and asked Captain Conviction 
to present it for them. Captain Conviction declined to 
1 The heart. 



viil] "THE HOLY WAR." 133 

be an advocate for rebels, and advised them to send it by 
one of themselves, with a rope about his neck. Mr. De- 
sires Awake went with it. The Prince took it from his 
hands, and wept as Desires Awake gave it in. Emmanuel 
bade him go his way till the request could be considered. 
The unhappy criminals knew not how to take the answer. 
Mr. Understanding thought it promised well. Conscience 
and Will be Will, borne down by shame for their sins, 
looked for nothing but immediate death. They tried 
again. They threw themselves on Emmanuel's mercy. 
They drew up a confession of their horrible iniquities. 
This, at least, they wished to offer to him whether he 
would pity them or not. For a messenger some of them 
thought of choosing one Old Good Deed. Conscience, 
however, said that would never do. Emmanuel would 
answer, " Is Old Good Deed yet alive in Mansoul ? Then 
let Old Good Deed save it." Desires Awake went again 
with the rope on his neck, as Captain Conviction rec- 
ommended. Mr. Wet Eyes went with him, wringing his 
hands. 

Emmanuel still held out no comfort; he promised 
merely that in the camp the next morning he would give 
such an answer as should be to his glory. Nothing but 
the worst was now looked for. Mansoul passed the night 
in sackcloth and ashes. When day broke, the prisoners 
dressed themselves in mourning, and were carried to the 
camp in chains, with ropes on their necks, beating their 
breasts. Prostrate before Emmanuel's throne, they re- 
peated their confession. They acknowledged that death 
and the bottomless pit would be no more than a just retri- 
bution for their crimes. As they excused nothing and 
promised nothing, Emmanuel at once delivered them their 
pardons sealed with seven seals. He took off their, ropes 



134 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

and mourning, clothed them in shining garments, and gave 
them chains and jewels. 

Lord Will be Will " swooned outright." When he re- 
covered, "the Prince" embraced and kissed him. The 
bells in Mansoul were set ringing. Bonfires blazed. Em- 
manuel reviewed his army ; and Mansoul, ravished at the 
sight, prayed him to remain and be their King for ever. 
He entered the city again in triumph, the people strewing 
boughs and flowers before him. The streets and squares 
were rebuilt on a new model. Lord Will be Will, now 
regenerate, resumed the charge of the gates. The old 
Lord Mayor was reinstated. Mr. Knowledge was made 
Recorder, " not out of contempt for old Conscience, who 
was by -and -bye to have another employment." Diabo- 
lus's image was taken down and broken to pieces, and the 
inhabitants of Mansoul were so happy that they sang of 
Emmanuel in their sleep. 

Justice, however, remained to be done on the hardened 
and impenitent. 

There were " perhaps necessities in the nature of things," 
as Bishop Butler says, and an example could not be made 
of the principal offender. But his servants and old of- 
ficials were lurking in the lanes and alleys. They were 
apprehended, thrown into gaol, and brought to formal 
trial. Here we have Bunyan at his best. The scene in 
the court rises to the level of the famous trial of Faithful 
in Vanity Fair. The prisoners were Diabolus's Aldermen 
— Mr. Atheism, Mr. Incredulity, Mr. Lustings, Mr. Forget 
Good, Mr. Hardheart, Mr. Falsepeace, and the rest. The 
proceedings were precisely what Bunyan must have wit- 
nessed at a common English Assizes. The Judges were 
the new Recorder and the new Mayor. Mr. Do-right was 
Town. Clerk. A jury was empanelled in the usual way. 



viil] "THE HOLY WAR." 135 

Mr. Knowall, Mr. Telltrue, and Mr. Hatelies were the prin- 
cipal witnesses. 

Atheism was first brought to the bar, being charged 
" with having pertinaciously and doltingly taught that 
there was no God." He pleaded Not Guilty. Mr. Know- 
all was placed in the witness-box and sworn. 

" My Lord," he said, " I know the prisoner at the bar. 
I and he were once in Villains' Lane together, and he at 
that time did briskly talk of diverse opinions. And then 
and there I heard him say that for his part he did believe 
that there was no God. 'But,' said he, ' I can profess one 
and be religious too, if the company I am in and the circum- 
stances of other things,' said he, 'shall put me upon it.'" 

Telltrue and Hatelies were next called. 

" Telltrue. My Lord, I was formerly a great companion of the pris- 
oner's, for the which I now repent. me; and I have often heard him 
say, and with very great stomach-fulness, that he believed there was 
neither God, Angel, nor Spirit. 

" Town Clerk. Where did you hear him say so ? 

" Telltrue. In Blackmouth Lane and in Blasphemers' Row, and in 
many other places besides. 

" Town Clerk. Have you much knowledge of him ? 

" Telltrue. I know him to be a Diabolonian, the son of a Diabolo- 
nian, and a horrible man to deny a Deity. His father's name was 
Never be Good, and he had more children than this Atheism. 

" Town Clerk. Mr. Hatelies. Look upon the prisoner at the bar. 
Do you know him. 

" Hatelies. My Lord, this Atheism is one of the vilest wretches 
that ever I came near or had to do with in my life. I have heard 
him say that there is no God. I have heard him say that there is 
no world to come, no sin, nor punishment hereafter ; and, moreover, 
I have heard him say that it was as good to go to a bad-house as to 
go to hear a sermon. 

" Town Clerk. Where did you hear him say these things ? 

" Hatelies. In Drunkards' Row, just at Rascal Lane's End, at a 
house in which Mr. Impiety lived." 



136 BUNYAN. [chap. 

The next prisoner was Mr. Lustings, who said that he 
was of high birth, and " used to pleasures and pastimes 
of greatness." He had always been allowed to follow his 
own inclinations, and it seemed strange to hirn that he 
should be called in question for things which not only he 
but every man secretly or openly approved. 

When the evidence had been heard against him he ad- 
mitted frankly its general correctness. 

" I," he said, " was ever of opinion that the happiest life 
that a man could live on earth was to keep himself back 
from nothing that he desired ; nor have I been false at 
any time to this opinion of mine, but have lived in the 
love of my notions all my days. Nor was I ever so churl- 
ish, having found such sweetness in them myself, as to 
keep the commendation of them from others." 

Then came Mr. Incredulity. He was charged with hav- 
ing encouraged the town of Mansoul to resist Shaddai. 
Incredulity, too, had the courage of his opinions. 

" I know not Shaddai," he said. " I love my old Prince. 
I thought it my duty to be true to my trust, and to do 
what I could to possess the minds of the men of Mansoul 
to do their utmost to resist strangers and foreigners, and 
with might to fight against them. Nor have I nor shall I 
change my opinion for fear of trouble, though you at pres- 
ent are possessed of place and power." 

Forget Good pleaded age and craziness. He was the 
son of a Diabolonian called Love Naught. He had utter- 
ed blasphemous speeches in Allbase Lane, next door to the 
sign of "Conscience Seared with a Hot Iron;" also in 
Flesh Lane, right opposite the Church ; also in Nauseous 
Street ; also at the sign of the " Reprobate," next door to 
the " Descent into the Pit." 

Falsepcace insisted that he was wrongly named in the 



viil] "THE HOLY WAR." 137 

indictment. His real name was Peace, and he had always 
laboured for peace. When war broke out between Shad- 
dai and Diabolus, he had endeavoured to reconcile them, 
<fec. Evidence was given that Falsepeace was his right 
designation. His father's name was Flatter. His moth- 
er, before she married Flatter, was called Mrs. Sootheup. 
When her child was born she always spoke of him as 
Falsepeace. She would call him twenty times a day, my 
little Falsepeace, my pretty Falsepeace, my sweet rogue 
Falsepeace ! &c. 

The court rejected his plea. He was told " that he had 
wickedly maintained the town of Mansoul in rebellion 
against its king, in a false, lying, and damnable peace, con- 
trary to the law of Shaddai. Peace that was not a com- 
panion of truth and holiness, was an accursed and treach- 
erous peace, and was grounded on a lie. 

No Truth had assisted with his own hands in pulling 
down the image of Shaddai. He had set up the horned im- 
age of the beast Diabolus at the same place, and had torn 
and consumed all that remained of the laws of the king. 

Pitiless said his name was not Pitiless, but Cheer Up. 
He disliked to see Mansoul inclined to melancholy, and 
that was all his offence. Pitiless, however, was proved to 
be the name of him. It was a habit of the Diabolonians 
to assume counterfeit appellations. Covetousness called 
himself Good Husbandry; Pride called himself Handsome; 
and so on. 

Mr. Haughty's figure is admirably drawn in a few lines. 
Mr. Haughty, when arraigned, declared " that he had car- 
ried himself bravely, not considering who was his foe, or 
what was the cause in which he was engaged. It was 
enough for him if he fought like a man and came off vie- 
torious." 



138 BUNYAN. [chap. 

The jury, it seems, made no distinctions between opin- 
ions and acts. They did not hold that there was any 
divine right in man to think what he pleased, and to say 
what he thought. Bunyan had suffered as a martyr ; but 
it was as a martyr for truth, not for general licence. The 
genuine Protestants never denied that it was right to pro- 
hibit men from teaching lies, and to punish them if they 
disobeyed. The persecution of which they complained 
was the persecution of the honest man by the knave. 

All the prisoners were found guilty by a unanimous 
verdict. Even Mr. Moderate, who was one of the jury, 
thought a man must be wilfully blind who wished to spare 
them. They were sentenced to be executed the next day. 
Incredulity contrived to escape in the night. Search was 
made for him, but he was not to be found in Mansoul. 
He had fled beyond the walls, and had joined Diabolus 
near Hell Gate. The rest, we are told, were crucified — 
crucified by the hands of the men of Mansoul them- 
selves. They fought and struggled at the place of exe- 
cution so violently that Shaddai's secretary was obliged 
to send assistance. But justice was done at last, and all 
the Diabolonians, except Incredulity, were thus made an 
end of. 

They were made an end of for a time only. Mansoul, 
by faith in Christ, and by the help of the Holy Spirit, had 
crucified all manner of sin in its members. It was faith 
that had now the victory. Unbelief had, unfortunately, 
escaped. It had left Mansoul for the time, and had gone 
to its master the devil. But unbelief, being intellectual, 
had not been crucified with the sins of the flesh, and thus 
could come back, and undo the work which faith had ac- 
complished. I do not know how far this view approves 
itself to the more curious theologians. Unbelief itself is 



viil] "THE HOLY WAR." 139 

said to be a product of the will ; but an allegory must not 
be cross-questioned too minutely. 

The cornucopia of spiritual blessings was now opened 
on Mansoul. All offences were fully and completely for- 
given. A Holy Law and Testament was bestowed on the 
people for their comfort and consolation, with a portion 
of the grace which dwelt in the hearts of Shaddai and 
Emmanuel themselves. They were to be allowed free 
access to Emmanuel's palace at all seasons, he himself 
undertaking to hear them and redress their grievances, 
and they were empowered and enjoined to destroy all Di- 
abolonians who might be found at any time within their 
precincts. 

These grants were embodied in a charter which was set 
up in gold letters on the castle door. Two ministers were 
appointed to carry on the government — one from Shad- 
dai's court ; the other a native of Mansoul. The first was 
Shaddai's Chief Secretary, the Holy Spirit. He, if they 
were obedient and well-conducted, would be " ten times 
better to them than the whole world." But they were 
cautioned to be careful of their behaviour, for if they 
grieved him he would turn against them, and the worst 
might then be looked for. The second minister was the 
old Recorder, Mr. Conscience, for whom, as was said, a 
new office had been provided. The address of Emmanuel 
to Conscience, in handing his commission to him, contains 
the essence of Bunyan's creed : 

" Thou must confine thyself to the teaching of moral 
virtues, to civil and natural duties. But thou must not 
attempt to presume to be a revealer of those high and su- 
pernatural mysteries that are kept close in the bosom of 
Shaddai, my father. For those things knows no man ; nor 
can any reveal them but my father's secretary only. . . . 
K 7 



140 BUNYAN. [chap. 

In all high and supernatural things thou must go to him 
for information and knowledge. Wherefore keep low 
and be humble ; and remember that the Diabolonians that 
kept not their first charge, but left their own standing, 
are now made prisoners in the pit. Be therefore con- 
tent with thy station. I have made thee my father's vice- 
gerent on earth in the things of which I have made men- 
tion before. Take thou power to teach them to Mansoul ; 
yea, to impose them with whips and chastisements if they 
shall not willingly hearken to do thy commandments. . . . 
And one thing more to my beloved Mr. Recorder, and to 
all the town of Mansoul. You must not dwell in nor stay 
upon anything of that which he hath in commission to 
teach you, as to your trust and expectation of the next 
world. Of the next world, I say ; for I purpose to give 
another to Mansoul when this is worn out. But for that 
you must wholly and solely have recourse to and make 
stay upon the doctrine of your teacher of the first order. 
Yea, Mr. Recorder himself must not look for life from 
that which he himself revealeth. His dependence for 
that must be founded in the doctrine of the other preacher. 
Let Mr. Recorder also take heed that he receive not any 
doctrine or points of doctrine that are not communicated 
to him by his superior teacher, nor yet within the precincts 
of his own formal knowledge." 

Here, as a work of art, The Hcly War should have its 
natural end. Mansoul had been created pure and happy. 
The devil plotted against it, took it, defiled it. The Lord 
of the town came to the rescue, drove the devil out, exe- 
cuted his officers and destroyed his works. Mansoul, ac- 
cording to Emmanuel's promise, was put into a better 
condition than that in which it was originally placed. 
New laws were drawn for it. New ministers were ap- 



viil] "THE HOLY WAR." 141 

pointed to execute them. Vice had been destroyed. Un- 
belief had been driven away. The future lay serene and 
bright before it ; all trials and dangers being safely passed. 
Thus we have all the parts of a complete drama — the fair 
beginning, the perils, the struggles, and the final victory 
of good. At this point, for purposes of art, the curtain 
ought to fall. 

For purposes of art — not, however, for purposes of 
truth ; for the drama of Mansoul was still incomplete, 
and will remain incomplete till man puts on another nat- 
ure or ceases altogether to be. Christianity might place 
him in a new relation to his Maker, and, according to 
Bunyan, might expel the devil out of his heart. But for 
practical purposes, as Mansoul too w r ell knows, the devil 
is still in possession. At intervals — as in the first cen- 
turies of the Christian era, for a period in the middle 
ages, and again in Protestant countries for another period 
at the Reformation — mankind made noble efforts to drive 
him out, and make the law of God into reality. But he 
comes back again, and the world is again as it was. The 
vices again flourish which had been nailed to the Cross. 
The statesman finds it as little possible as ever to take 
moral right and justice for his rule in politics. .The 
Evangelical preacher continues to confess and deplore the 
desperate wickedness of the human heart. The devil had 
been deposed, but his faithful subjects have restored him 
to his throne. The stone of Sisyphus has been brought 
to the brow of the hill only to rebound again to the bot- 
tom. The old battle has to be fought a second time, and, 
for all we can see, no closing victory will ever be in "this 
country of Universe." Bunyan knew this but too well. 
He tries to conceal it from himself by treating Mansoul 
alternatelv as the soul of a single individual from which 



142 BUNYAN. [chap. 

the devil may be so expelled as never dangerously to 
come back, or as the collective souls of the Christian 
■world. But, let him mean which of the two he will, the 
overpowering fact remains that, from the point of view of 
his own theology, the great majority of mankind are the 
devil's servants through life, and are made over to him 
everlastingly when their lives are over; while the human 
race itself continues to follow its idle amusements and its 
sinful pleasures as if no Emmanuel had ever come from 
heaven to rescue it. Thus the situation is incomplete, and 
the artistic treatment necessarily unsatisfactory — nay, in a 
sense even worse than unsatisfactory — for the attention of 
the reader, being reawakened by the fresh and lively treat- 
ment of the subject, refuses to be satisfied with conven- 
tional explanatory commonplaces. His mind is puzzled ; 
his faith wavers in its dependence upon a Being who can 
permit His work to be spoilt, His power defied, His victo- 
ries even, when won, made useless. 

Thus we take up the continuation of The Holy War 
with a certain weariness ana expectation of disappoint- 
ment. The delivery of Mansoul has not been finished 
after all, and, for all that we can see, the struggle between 
Shaddai and Diabolus may go on to eternity. Emmanuel, 
before he withdraws his presence, warns the inhabitants 
that many Diabolonians are still lurking about the outside 
walls of the town. 1 The names are those in St. Paul's list 
— Fornication, Adultery, Murder, Anger, Lasciviousness, 
Deceit, Evil Eye, Drunkenness, Revelling, Idolatry, Witch- 
craft, Variance, Emulation, Wrath, Strife, Sedition, Heresy. 
If all these were still abroad, not much had been gained 
by the crucifixion of the Aldermen. For the time, it was 

1 The Flesh. 



mi.] "THE HOLY WAR." 143 

true, they did not show themselves openly. Mansoul after 
the conquest was clothed in white linen, and was in a state 
of peace and glory. But the linen was speedily soiled 
again. Mr. Carnal Security became a great person in Man- 
soul. The Chief Secretary's functions fell early into abey- 
ance. He discovered the Recorder and Lord Will be Will 
at dinner in Mr. Carnal Security's parlour, and ceased to 
communicate with them. Mr. Godly Fear sounded an 
alarm, and Mr. Carnal Security's house was burnt by the 
mob ; but Mansoul's backslidings grew worse. It had its 
fits of repentance, and petitioned Emmanuel, but the mes- 
senger could have no admittance. The Lusts of the Flesh 
came out of their dens. They held a meeting in the room 
of Mr. Mischief, and wrote to invite Diabolus to return. 
Mr. Profane carried their letter to Hell Gate. Cerberus 
opened it, and a cry of joy ran through the prison. Beel- 
zebub, Lucifer, Apollyon, and the rest of the devils came 
crowding* to hear the news. Deadinan's bell was rung. 
Diabolus addressed the assembly, putting them in hopes 
of recovering their prize. " Nor need you fear, he said, 
that if ever we get Mansoul again, we after that shall be 
cast out any more. It is the law of that Prince that now 
they own, that if we get them a second time they shall be 
ours forever." He returned a warm answer to his friend, 
" which was subscribed as given at the Pit's mouth, by the 
joint consent of all the Princes of Darkness, by me, Di- 
abolus." The plan was to corrupt Mansoul's morals, and 
three devils of rank set off disguised to take service in the 
town, and make their way into the households of Mr. 
Mind, Mr. Godly Fear, and Lord Will be Will. Godly 
Fear discovered his mistake, and turned the devil out. 
The other two established themselves successfully, and Mr. 
Profane was soon at Hell Gate again to report progress. 



144 BUNYAN. [chap. 

Cerberus welcomed him with a "St. Mary, I am glad to 
see thee." Another council was held in Pandemonium, 
and Diabolus was impatient to show himself again on the 
scene. Apollyon advised him not to be in a hurry. " Let 
our friends," he said, " draw Mansoul more and more into 
sin — there is nothing like sin to devour Mansoul ;" but 
Diabolus would not wait for so slow a process, and raised 
an army of Doubters "from the land of Doubting, on the 
confines of Hell Gate Hill." " Doubt," Bunyan always 
admitted, had been his own most dangerous enemy. 

Happily the towns -people became aware of the peril 
which threatened them. Mr. Prywell, a great lover of 
Mansoul, overheard some Diabolonians talking about it at 
a place called Vile Hill. He carried his information to 
the Lord Mayor ; the Recorder rang the Alarm Bell ; Man- 
soul flew to penitence, held a day of fasting and humilia- 
tion, and prayed to Shaddai. The Diabolonians were 
hunted out, and all that could be found were killed. So 
far as haste and alarm would permit, Mansoul mended its 
ways. But on came the Doubting army, led by Incredu- 
lity, who had escaped crucifixion — " none was truer to 
Diabolus than he " — on they came under their several cap- 
tains, Vocation Doubters, Grace Doubters, Salvation Doubt- 
ers, &c. ; figures now gone to shadow ; then the deadliest 
foes of every English Puritan soul. Mansoul appealed 
passionately to the Chief Secretary ; but the Chief Secre- 
tary " had been grieved," and would have nothing to say 
to, it. The town legions went out to meet the invaders 
with good words, Prayer, and singing of Psalms. The 
Doubters replied with " horrible objections," which were 
frightfully effective. Lord Reason was wounded in the 
head, and the Lord Mayor in the eye ; Mr. Mind received 
a shot in the stomach, and Conscience was hit near the 



nn.] "THE HOLY WAR." 145 

heart ; but the wounds were not mortal. Mansoul had the 
best of it in the first engagement. Terror was followed 
by boasting and self-confidence ; a night sally was attempt- 
ed — night being the time when the Doubters were strong- 
est. The sally failed, and the men of Mansoul were turned 
to rout. Diabolus's army attacked Eargate, stormed the 
walls, forced their way into the town, and captured the 
whole of it except the castle. Then " Mansoul became a 
den of dragons, an emblem of Hell, a place of total dark- 
ness." " Mr. Conscience's wounds so festered that he could 
have no rest day or night." " Now a man might have 
walked for days together in Mansoul, and scarce have seen 
one in the town that looked like a religious man. Oh, 
the fearful state of Mansoul now !" " Now every corner 
swarmed with outlandish Doubters ; Red Coats and Black 
Coats walked the town by clusters, and filled the houses 
with hideous noises, lying stories, and blasphemous lan- 
guage against Shaddai and his Son." 

This is evidently meant for fashionable London in the 
time of Charles II. Bunyan was loyal to the King. He 
was no believer in moral regeneration through political rev- 
olution. But none the less he could see what was under 
his eyes, and he knew what to think of it. 

All was not lost, for the castle still held out. The only 
hope was in Emmanuel, and the garrison proposed to peti- 
tion again in spite of the ill-reception of their first mes- 
sengers. Godly Fear reminded them that no petition 
would be received which was not signed by the Lord Sec- 
retary, and that the Lord Secretary would sign nothing 
which he had not himself drawn up. The Lord Secretary, 
when appealed to in the proper manner, no longer refused 
his assistance. Captain Credence flew up to Shaddai's 
court with the simple words that Mansoul renounced all 



146 BUNYAN. [chap. 

trust in its own strength and relied upon its Saviour. 
This time its prayer would be heard. 

The devils, meanwhile, triumphant though they were, 
discovered that they could have no permanent victory un- 
less they could reduce the castle. "Doubters at a dis- 
tance," Beelzebub said, " are but like objections repelled 
by arguments. Can we but get them into the hold, and 
make them possessors of that, the day will be our own." 
The object was, therefore, to corrupt Mansoul at the heart. 

Then follows a very curious passage. Bunyan had still 
his eye on England, and had discerned the quarter from 
which her real danger would approach. Mansoul, the 
devil perceived, " was a market-town, much given to com- 
merce." "It would be possible to dispose of some of the 
devil's wares there." The people would be filled full, and 
made rich, and would forget Emmanuel. " Mansoul," they 
said, " shall be so cumbered with abundance that they shall 
be forced to make their castle a warehouse." Wealth 
once made the first object of existence, " Diabolus' s gang 
will have easy entrance, and the castle will be our own." 

Political economy was still sleeping in the womb of 
futurity. Diabolus was unable to hasten its birth, and an 
experiment which Bunyan thought would certainly have 
succeeded was not to be tried. The Deus ex Machina ap- 
peared with its flaming sword. The Doubting army was 
cut to pieces, and Mansoul was saved. Again, however, 
the work was imperfectly done. Diabolus, like the bad 
genius in the fairy tale, survived for fresh mischief. Diab- 
olus flew off again to Hell Gate, and was soon at the head 
of a new host ; part composed of fugitive Doubters whom 
he rallied, and part of a new set of enemies called Blood- 
men, by whom we are to understand persecutors, " a peo- 
ple from a land that lay under the Dog Star." " Captain 



viil] "THE HOLY WAR." 147 

Pope " was chief of the Bloodmen. His escutcheon " was 
the stake, the flame, and good men in it." The Bloodmen 
had done Diabolus wonderful service in time past. " Once 
they had forced Emmanuel out of the Kingdom of the Uni- 
verse, and why, thought he, might they not do it again ?" 

Emmanuel did not this time go in person to the en- 
counter. It was enough to send his captains. The Doubt- 
ers fled at the first onset. "The Bloodmen, when they 
saw that no Emmanuel was in the field, concluded that 
no Emmanuel was in Mansoul. Wherefore, they, looking 
upon what the captains did to be, as they called it, a fruit 
of the extravagancy of their wild and foolish fancies, rather 
despised them than feared them." " They proved, never- 
theless, chicken-hearted, when they saw themselves match- 
ed and equalled." The chiefs were taken prisoners, and 
brought to trial like Atheism and his companions, and so, 
with an address from the Prince, the story comes to a 
close. 

Thus at last The Holy War ends, or seems to end. It 
is as if Bunyan had wished to show that though the con- 
verted Christian was still liable to the assaults of Satan, 
and even to be beaten down and overcome by him, his 
state was never afterwards so desperate as it had been be- 
fore the ^redemption, and that he had assistance ready at 
hand to save him when near extremity. But the reader 
whose desire it is that good shall triumph, and evil be put 
to shame and overthrown, remains but partially satisfied ; 
and the last conflict and its issues leave Mansoul still sub- 
ject to fresh attacks. Diabolus was still at large. Carnal 
Sense broke prison, and continued to lurk in the town. 
Unbelief " was a nimble Jack : him they could never lay 
hold of, though they attempted to do it often." Unbelief 
remained in Mansoul till the time that Mansoul ceased to 

n* 



148 BUNT AN. [chap. viii. 

dwell in the country of the Universe ; and where Unbelief 
was, Diabolus would not be without a friend to open the 
gates to him. Bunyan says, indeed, that " he was stoned 
as often as he showed himself in the streets." He shows 
himself in the streets much at his ease in these days of 
ours after two more centuries. 

Here lies the real weakness of The Holy War. It may 
be looked at either as the war in the soul of each sinner 
that is saved, or as the war for the deliverance of human- 
ity. Under the first aspect it leaves out of sight the large 
majority of mankind who are not supposed to be saved, 
and out of whom, therefore, Diabolus is not driven at all. 
Under the other aspect the struggle is still unfinished ; the 
last act of the drama has still to be played, and we know 
not what the conclusion is to be. 

To attempt to represent it, therefore, as a work of art, 
with a beginning, a middle, and an end, is necessarily a 
failure. The mysteries and contradictions which the 
Christian revelation leaves unsolved are made tolerable to 
us by Hope. We are prepared to find in religion many 
things which we cannot understand ; and difficulties do 
not perplex us so long as they remain in a form to which 
we are accustomed. To emphasise the problem by offering 
it to us in an allegory, of which we are presumed to pos- 
sess a key, serves only to revive Man Friday's question, or 
the old dilemma which neither intellect nor imagination 
has ever dealt with successfully. " Deus aut non vult 
tollere mala, aut nequit. Si non vult non est bonus. Si 
nequit non est omnipotens." It is wiser to confess with 
Butler that "there may be necessities in the nature of 
things which we are not acquainted with." 



CHAPTER IX. 



If The Holy War is an unfit subject for allegorical 
treatment, The Pilgrim's Progress is no less perfectly 
adapted for it. The Holy War is a representation of the 
struggle of human nature with evil, and the struggle is 
left undecided. The Pilgrim's Progress is a representa- 
tion of the efforts of a single soul after holiness, which 
has its natural termination when the soul quits its mortal 
home and crosses the dark river. Each one of us has his 
own life-battle to fight out, his own sorrows and trials, his 
own failures or successes, and his own end. He wins the 
game, or he loses it. The account is wound up, and the 
curtain falls upon him. Here Bunyan had a material as 
excellent in itself as it was exactly suited to his peculiar 
genius; and his treatment of the subject from his own 
point of view — that of English Protestant Christianity — 
is unequalled, and never will be equalled. I may say 
never, for in this world of change the point of view alters 
fast, and never continues in one stay. As we are swept 
along the stream of time, lights and shadows shift their 
places, mountain plateaus turn to sharp peaks, mountain 
ranges dissolve into vapour. The river which has been 
gliding deep and slow along the plain, leaps suddenly over 
a precipice and plunges foaming down a sunless gorge. 



150 BUNYAN. [chap. 

In the midst of changing circumstances the central ques- 
tion remains the same — What am I? what is this world, 
in which I appear and disappear like a bubble ? who made 
me? and what am I to do? Some answer or other the 
mind of man demands and insists on receiving. Theolo- 
gian or poet offers, at long intervals, explanations which 
are accepted as credible for a time. They wear out, and 
another follows, and then another. Bunyan's answer has 
served average English men and women for two hundred 
years, but no human being with Bunyan's intellect and 
Bunyan's sincerity can again use similar language ; and 
The Pilgrim'' s Progress is and will remain unique of its 
kind — an imperishable monument of the form in which 
the problem presented itself to a person of singular truth- 
fulness, simplicity, and piety, who, after many struggles, 
accepted the Puritan creed as the adequate solution of it. 
It was composed exactly at the time when it was possible 
for such a book to come into being- — the close of the 
period when the Puritan formula was a real belief, and 
was about to change from a living principle into an intel- 
lectual opinion. So long as a religion is fully alive, men 
do not talk about it or make allegories about it. They 
assume its truth as out of reach of question, and they 
simply obey its precepts as they obey the law of the land. 
It becomes a subject of art and discourse only when men 
are unconsciously ceasing to believe, and therefore the 
more vehemently think that they believe, and repudiate 
with indignation the suggestion that doubt has found its 
way into them. After this, religion no longer governs 
their lives. It governs only the language in which they 
express themselves, and they preserve it eagerly, in the 
shape of elaborate observances or in the agreeable forms 
of art and literature. 



ix.] "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 151 

The Pilgrim s Progress was written before The Holy 
War, while Bunyan was still in prison at Bedford, and was 
but half conscious of the gifts which he possessed. It 
was written for his own entertainment, and therefore with- 
out the thought— so fatal in its effects and so hard to be 
resisted — of what the world would say about it. It was 
written in compulsory quiet, when he was comparatively 
unexcited by the effort of perpetual preaching, and the 
shapes of things could present themselves to him as they 
really were, undistorted by theological narrowness. It is 
the same story which he has told of himself in Grace 
Abounding, thrown out into an objective form. 

He tells us himself, in a metrical introduction the cir- 
cumstances under which it was composed : — 

" When at the first I took my pen in hand, 
Thus for to write, I did not understand 
That I at all should make a little book 
In such a mode. Nay, I had undertook 
To make another, which when almost done, 
Before I was aware I this begun. 

"And thus it was: I writing of the way 
And race of saints in this our Gospel day, 
Fell suddenly into an Allegory 
About the journey and the way to glory 
In more than twenty things which I set down ; 
This done, I twenty more had in my crown, 
And these again began to multiply, 
Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly. 
Nay then, thought I, if that you breed so fast, 
I'll put you by yourselves, lest you at last 
Should prove ad Infinitum, and eat out 
The book that I already am about. 

" Well, so I did ; but yet I did not think 
To show to all the world my pen and ink 



152 BUNYAN. [chap. 

In such a mode. I only thought to make, 
I knew not what. Nor did I undertake 
Merely to please my neighbours ; no, not I. 
I did it mine own self to gratify. 

"Neither did I but vacant seasons spend 
In this my scribble ; nor did I intend 
But to divert myself in doing this 
From worser thoughts which make me do amiss. 
Thus I set pen to paper with delight, 
And quickly had my thoughts in black and white ; 
For having now my method by the end, 
Still as I pulled it came ; and so I penned 
It down : until at last it came to be 
For length and breadth the bigness which you see. 

" Well, when I had thus put my ends together, 
I showed them others, that I might see whether 
They would condemn them or them justify. 
And some said, Let them live ; some, Let them die ; 
Some said, John, print it ; others said, Not so ; 
Some said it might do good ; otliers said, No. 

" Now was I in a strait, and did not see 
Which was the best thing to be done by me. 
At last I thought, since you are thus divided, 
I print it will ; and so the case decided." 

The difference of opinion among Bunyan's friends is 
easily explicable. The allegoric representation of religion 
to men profoundly convinced of the truth of it might 
naturally seem light and fantastic, and the breadth of the 
conception could not please the narrow sectarians who 
knew no salvation beyond the lines of their peculiar 
formulas. The Pilgrim, though in a Puritan dress, is a 
genuine man. His experience is so truly human experi- 
ence, that Christians of every persuasion can identify 
themselves with him ; and even those who regard Chris- 



ix.] "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 153 

tianity itself as but a natural outgrowth of the conscience 
and intellect, and yet desire to live nobly and make the 
best of themselves, can recognise familiar footprints in 
every step of Christian's journey. Thus The Pilgrim's 
Progress is a book which, when once read, can never be 
forgotten. We too, every one of us, are pilgrims on the 
same road, and images and illustrations come back upon 
us from so faithful an itinerary, as we encounter similar 
trials, and learn for ourselves the accuracy with which 
Bunyan has described them. There is no occasion to 
follow a story minutely which memory can so universally 
supply. I need pause only at a few spots which are too 
charming to pass by. 

How picturesque and vivid are the opening lines: 
"As I walked through the wilderness of this world I 
lighted on a certain place where there was a den, 1 and 
I laid me down in that place to sleep, and as I slept I 
dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a man, 
a man clothed in rags, standing with his face from his 
own home with a book in his hand, and a great burden 
upon his back." 

' The man is Bunyan himself as we see him in Grace 
Abounding. His sins are the burden upon his back. He 
reads his book and weeps and trembles. He speaks of 
his fears to his friends and kindred. They think " some 
frenzy distemper has got into his head." He meets a man 
in the fields whose name is Evangelist. Evangelist tells 
him to flee from the City of Destruction. He shows him 
the way by which he must go, and points to the far-off 
light which will guide him to the wicket-gate. He sets 
off, and his neighbours of course think him mad. The 
world always thinks men mad who turn their backs upon 
1 The Bedford Prison. 



154 BUNYAN. [chap. 

it. Obstinate and Pliable (how well we know them 
both !) follow to persuade him to return. Obstinate talks 
practical common sense to him, and, as it has no effect, 
gives him up as a fantastical fellow. Pliable thinks that 
there may be something in what he says, and offers to go 
with him. 

Before they can reach the wicket -gate they fall into 
a " miry slough." Who does not know the miry slough 
too ? When a man begins for the first time to think se- 
riously about himself, the first thing that rises before him 
is a consciousness of his miserable past life. Amendment 
seems to be desperate. He thinks it is too late to change 
for any useful purpose, and he sinks into despondency. 

Pliable, finding the road disagreeable, has soon had 
enough of it. He scrambles out of the slough " on the 
side which was nearest to his own house " and goes home. 
Christian, struggling manfully, is lifted out "by a man 
whose name was Help," and goes on upon his journey, 
but the burden on his back weighs him down. He falls 
in with Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who lives in the town of 
Carnal Policy. Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who looks like a 
gentleman, advises him not to think about his sins. If 
he has done wrong he must alter his life and do better 
for the future. He directs him to a village called Mo- 
rality, where he will find a gentleman well known in those 
parts, who will take his burden off- — Mr. Legality. Either 
Mr. Legality will do it himself, or it can be done equally 
well by his pretty young son, Mr. Civility. 

The way to a better life does not lie in a change of out- 
ward action, but in a changed heart. Legality soon passes 
into civility, according to the saying that vice loses half 
its evil when it loses its grossness. Bunyan would have 
said that the poison was the more deadly from being con- 



ix.] "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 155 

cealed. Christian, after a near escape, is set straight again. 
He is admitted into the wicket-gate, and is directed how^ 
he is to go forward. He asks if he may not lose his way. 
He is answered Yes, " There are many ways (that) butt 
down on this, and they are crooked and wide. But thus 
thou mayest know the right from the wrong, that only 
being straight and narrow." 

Good people often suppose that when a man is once 
" converted," as they call it, and has entered on a religious 
life, he will find everything made easy. He has turned to 
Christ, and in Christ he will find rest and pleasantness. 
The path of duty is unfortunately not strewed with flow- 
ers at all. The primrose road leads to the other place. 
As on all other journeys, to persevere is the difficulty. 
The pilgrim's feet grow sorer the longer he walks. His 
lower nature follows him like a shadow, watching oppor- 
tunities to trip him up, and ever appearing in some new 
disguise. In the way of comfort he is allowed only cer- 
tain resting-places, quiet intervals of peace when temp- 
tation is absent, and the mind can gather strength and 
encouragement from a sense of the progress which it has 
made. 

The first of these resting-places at which Christian ar- 
rives is the " Interpreter's House." This means, I con- 
ceive, that he arrives at a right understanding of the ob- 
jects of human desire as they really are. He learns to dis- 
tinguish there between passion and patience, passion which 
demands immediate gratification, and patience which can 
wait and hope. He sees the action of grace on the heart, 
and sees the devil labouring to put it out. He sees the 
man in the iron cage who was once a flourishing professor, 
but had been tempted away by pleasure and had sinned 

against light. He hears a dream too — one of Bunyan's 
L 



156 BUNYAN. [chap. 

own early dreams, bat related as by another person. The 
Pilgrim himself was beyond the reach of such uneasy 
visions. But it shows how profoundly the terrible side 
of Christianity had seized on Bunyan's imagination, and 
how little he was able to forget it. 

" This night as I was in my sleep I dreamed, and behold 
the heavens grew exceeding black ; also it thundered and 
lightened in most fearful wise, that it put me into an 
agony ; so I looked up in my dream and saw the clouds 
rack at an unusual rate, upon which I heard a great sound 
of a trumpet, and saw also a man sit upon a cloud attended 
with the thousands of heaven. They were all in a flaming 
fire, and the heaven also was in a burning flame. I heard 
then a voice, saying, Arise ye dead and come to judgment ; 
and with that the rocks rent, the graves opened, and the 
dead that were therein came forth. Some of them were 
exceeding glad and looked upward ; some sought to hide 
themselves under the mountains. Then I saw the man 
that sate upon the cloud open the book and bid the world 
draw near. Yet there was, by reason of a fierce flame 
that issued out and came from before him, a convenient 
distance betwixt him and them, as betwixt the judge and 
the prisoners at the bar. I heard it also proclaimed to 
them that attended on the man that sate on the cloud, 
Gather together the tares, the chaff, and the stubble, and 
cast them into the burning lake. And with that the bot- 
tomless pit opened just whereabouts I stood, out of the 
mouth of which there came in an abundant manner smoke 
and coals of fire with hideous noises. It was also said to 
the same persons, Gather the wheat into my garner. And 
with that I saw many catched up and carried away into 
the clouds, but I was left behind. I also sought to hide 
myself, but I could not, for the man that sate upon the 



ix.J "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 157 

cloud still kept his eye upon me. My sins also came into 
my mind, and my conscience did accuse me on every side. 
I thought the day of judgment was come, and I was not 
ready for it." 

The resting-time comes to an end. The Pilgrim gath- 
ers himself together, and proceeds upon his way. He is 
not to be burdened for ever with the sense of his sins. It 
fell from off his back at the sight of the cross. Three 
shining ones appear and tell him that his sins are for- 
given ; they take off his rags and provide him with a new 
suit. 

He now encounters fellow-travellers ; and the serious- 
ness of the story is relieved by adventures and humorous 
conversations. At the bottom of a hill he finds three 
gentlemen asleep, " a little out of the way." These were 
Simple, Sloth, and Presumption. He tries to rouse them, 
but does not succeed. Presently two others are seen tum- 
bling over the wall into the Narrow Way. They are come 
from the land of Vain Glory, and are called Formalist and 
Hypocrisy. Like the Pilgrim, they are bound for Mount 
Zion ; but the wicket-gate was " too far about," and they 
had come by a shortcut. "They had custom for it a 
thousand years and more; and custom being of so long 
standing, would be admitted legal by any impartial judge." 
Whether right or wrong, they insist that they are in the 
way, and no more is to be said. But they are soon out 
of it again. The hill is the hill Difficulty, and the road 
parts into three. Two go round the bottom, as modern 
engineers would make them. The other rises straight over 
the top. Formalist and Hypocrisy choose the easy ways, 
and are heard of no more. Pilgrim climbs up, and after 
various accidents comes to- the second resting-place, the 
Palace Beautiful, built by the Lord of the Hill to entertain 



158 BUNYAN. [chap. 

strangers in. The recollections of Sir Bevis, of Southamp- 
ton, furnished Bunyan with his framework. Lions guard 
the court. Fair ladies entertain him as if he had been a 
knight-errant in quest of the Holy Grail. The ladies, of 
course, are all that they ought to be : the Christian graces 
— Discretion, Prudence, Piety, and Charity. He tells them 
his history. They ask him if he has brought none of his 
old belongings with him. He answers Yes, but greatly 
against his will : his inward and carnal cogitations, with 
which his countrymen, as well as himself, were so much 
delighted. Only in golden hours they seemed to leave 
him. Who cannot recognise the truth of this? Who has 
not groaned over the follies and idiotcies that cling to us 
like the doggerel verses that hang about our memories? 
The room in which he sleeps is called Peace. In the 
'morning he is shown the curiosities, chiefly Scripture rel- 
ics, in the palace. He is taken to the roof, from which 
he sees far off the outlines of the Delectable Mountains. 
Next, the ladies carry him to the armoury, and equip him 
for the dangers which lie next before him. He is to go 
down into the Valley of Humiliation, and pass thence 
through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

Bunyan here shows the finest insight. To some pil- 
grims the Valley of Humiliation was the pleasantest part 
of the journey. Mr. Feeblemind, in the second part of 
the story, was happier there than anywhere. But Chris- 
tian is Bunyan himself ; and Bunyan had a stiff, self-willed 
nature, and had found his spirit the most stubborn part of 
him. Down here he encounters Apollyon himself, " strad- 
dling quite over the whole breadth of the way" — a more 
effective devil than the Diabolus of The Holy War. He 
fights him for half a day, is sorely wounded in head, hand, 
and foot, and has a near escape of being pressed to death* 



IX.] "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS," 159 

Apollyoti spreads his bat wings at last, and flies away ; but 
there remains the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the dark 
scene of lonely horrors. Two men meet him on the bor- 
ders of it. They tell him the valley is full of spectres ; 
and they warn him, if he values his life, to go back. Well 
Bunyan knew these spectres, those dreary misgivings that 
he was toiling after an illusion ; that " good " and " evil " 
had no meaning except on earth, and for man's convenience ; 
and that he himself was but a creature of a day, allowed 
a brief season of what is called existence) and then to pass 
away and be as if he had never been. It speaks well for 
Bunyan's honesty that this state of mind, which religious 
people generally call wicked, is placed directly in his Pil- 
grim's path, and he is compelled to pass through it. In 
the valley, close at the road-side, there is a pit, which is 
one of the mouths of hell. A wicked spirit whispers to 
him as he goes by. He imagines that the thought had 
proceeded out of his own heart. 

The sky clears when he is beyond the gorge. Outside 
it are the caves where the two giants, Pope and Pagan, 
had lived in old times. Pagan had been dead many a day. 
Pope was still living, " but he had grown so crazy and 
stiff in his joints that he could now do little more than sit 
in his cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they went by, 
and biting his nails because he could not come at them." 

Here he overtakes Faithful, a true pilgrim like himself. 
Faithful had met with trials ; but his trials have not re- 
sembled Christian's. Christian's difficulties, like Bunyan's 
own, had been all spiritual. " The lusts of the flesh " seem 
to have had no attraction for him. Faithful had been as- 
sailed by Wanton, and had been obliged to fly from her. 
He had not fallen into the slough ; but he had been be- 
guiled by the Old Adam, who offered him one of his daugh- 



160 BUNYAN. [chap 

ters for a wife. In the Valley of the Shadow of Death he 
had found sunshine all the way. Doubts about the truth 
of religion had never troubled the simpler nature of the 
good Faithful. 

Mr. Talkative is the next character introduced, and is 
one of the best figures which Bunyan has drawn ; Mr. 
Talkative, with Scripture at his fingers' ends, and perfect 
master of all doctrinal subtleties, ready " to talk of things 
heavenly or things earthly, things moral or things evan- 
gelical, things sacred or things profane, things past or 
things to come, things foreign or things at home, things 
essential or things circumstantial, provided that all be done 
to our profit." 

This gentleman would have taken in Faithful, who was 
awed by such a rush of volubility. Christian has seen 
him before, knows him well, and can describe him. " He 
is the son of one Saywell. He dwelt in Prating Row. 
He is for any company and for any talk. As he talks 
now with you, so will he talk when on the ale-bench. The 
more drink he hath in his crown, the more of these things 
he hath in his mouth. Religion hath no place in his 
heart, or home, or conversation; all that he hath lieth in, 
his tongue, and his religion is to m*\ke a noise therewith." 

The elect, though they have ceased to be of the world, 
are still in the world. They are still part of the general 
community of mankind, and share, whether they like it or 
not, in the ordinary activities of life. Faithful and Chris- 
tian have left the City of Destruction. They have shaken 
off from themselves all liking for idle pleasures. ' They 
nevertheless find themselves in their journey at Vanity 
Fair, " a fair set up by Beelzebub 5000 years ago." Trade 
of all sorts went on at Vanity Fair, and people of all sorts 
were collected there : cheats, fools, asses, knaves, and 



«•] « THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 161 

rogues. Some were honest, many were dishonest ; some 
lived peaceably and uprightly, others robbed, murdered, 
seduced their neighbours' wives, or lied and perjured them- 
selves. Vanity Fair was European society as it existed in 
the days of Charles II. Each nation was represented. 
There was British Row, French Row, and Spanish Row. 
" The wares of Rome and her merchandise were greatly 
promoted at the fair, only the English nation, with some 
others, had taken a dislike to them." The pilgrims appear 
on the scene as the Apostles appeared at Antioch and 
Rome, to tell the people that there were things in the 
world of more consequence than money and pleasure. 
The better sort listen. Public opinion in general calls 
them fools and Bedlamites. The fair becomes excited, 
disturbances are feared, and the authorities send to make 
inquiries. Authorities naturally disapprove of novelties; 
and Christian and Faithful are arrested, beaten, and put 
in the cage. Their friends insist that they have done no 
harm, that they are innocent strangers teaching only what 
will make men better instead of worse. A riot follows. 
The authorities determine to make an example of them, 
and the result is the ever-memorable trial of the two pil- 
grims. They are brought in irons before my Lord Hate- 
good, charged with " disturbing the trade of the town, 
creating divisions, and making converts to their opinions 
in contempt of the law of the Prince." 

Faithful begins with an admission which would have 
made it difficult for Hategood to let him off, for he says 
that the Prince they talked of, being Beelzebub, the enemy 
of the Lord, he defied him and all his angels. Three wit- 
nesses were then called: Envy, Superstition, and Pick- 
thank. 

Envy says that Faithful regards neither prince nor peo- 



162 BUNYAX. [chap. 

pie, but does all he can to possess men with disloyal no- 
tions, which he calls principles of faith and holiness. 

Superstition says that he knows little of him, but has 
heard him say that " our religion is naught, and such by 
which no man can please God, from which saying his 
Lordship well knows will follow that we are yet in our 
sins, and finally shall be damned." 

Pickthank deposes that he has heard Faithful rail on 
Beelzebub, and speak contemptuously of his honourable 
friends my Lord Old Man, my Lord Carnal Delight, my 
Lord Luxurious, my Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my Lord 
Lechery, Sir Having Greedy, and the rest of the nobility, 
besides which he has railed against his lordship on the 
bench himself, calling him an ungodly villain. 

The evidence was perfectly true, and the prisoner, when 
called on for his defence, confirmed it. He says (avoiding 
the terms in which he was said to rail, and the like) that 
"the Prince of the town, with all the rabblement of his 
attendants by this gentleman named, are more fit for a be- 
ing in hell than in this town or country." 

Lord Hategood has been supposed to have been drawn 
from one or other of Charles II.'s judges, perhaps fro'm 
either Twisden or Chester, who had the conversation with 
Bunyan's wife. But it is difficult to see how either one 
or the other could have acted otherwise than* they did. 
Faithful might be quite right. Hell might be, and proba- 
bly was, the proper place for Beelzebub, and for all persons 
holding authority under him. But as a matter of fact, a 
form of society did for some purpose or other exist, and 
had been permitted to exist for 5000 years, owning Beel- 
zebub's sovereignty. It must defend itself, or must cease 
to be, and it could not be expected to make no effort at 
self-preservation. Faithful had come to Vanit] Fair to 



IX.] « THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 163 

make a revolution — a revolution extremely desirable, but 
one which it was unreasonable to expect the constituted 
authorities to allow to go forward. It was not a case of 
false witness. A prisoner who admits that he has taught 
the people that their Prince ought to be in hell, and has 
called the judge an ungodly villain, cannot complain if he 
is accused of preaching rebellion. 

Lord Hategood charges the jury, and explains the law. 
" There was an Act made," he says, " in the days of Pha- 
raoh the Great, servant to our Prince, that lest those of a 
contrary religion should multiply and grow too strong for 
him, their males should be thrown into the river. There 
was also an Act made in the days of Nebuchadnezzar the 
Great, that whoever would not fall down and worship his 
golden image should be thrown into a fiery furnace. 
There was also an Act made in the days of Darius that 
whoso for some time called upon any God but him should 
be cast into the lion's den. Now the substance of these 
laws this rebel hath broken, not only in thought (which 
is not to be borne), but also in word and deed, which 
must, therefore, be intolerable. For that of Pharaoh, his 
law was made upon a supposition to prevent mischief, 
no crime being yet apparent. For the second and third 
you see his disputations against our religion, and for 
the treason he hath confessed he deserveth to die the 
death." 

" Then went the jury out, whose names were Mr. Blind- 
man, Mr. Nogood, Mr. Malice, Mr. Lovelust, Mr. Liveloose, 
Mr. Heady, Mr. Highmind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cru- 
elty, Mr. Hatelight, and Mr. Implacable, who every one 
gave in his private verdict against him among themselves, 
and afterwards unanimously concluded to bring him in 
guilty Lcxore the judge. And first, Mr. Blindman, the 
8 



164 BUNYAN. [chap. 

foreman, said : I see clearly that this man is a heretic. 
Then said Mr. Nogood, Away with such a fellow from 
the earth. Aye, said Mr. Malice, I hate the very looks of 
him. Then said Mr. Lovelust, I could never endure him. 
Nor I, said Mr. Liveloose, for he would aiways be con- 
demning my way. Hang him, hang him, said Mr. Heady. 
A sorry scrub, said Mr. Highmind. My heart riseth 
against him, said Mr. Enmity. He is a rogue, said Mr. 
Liar. Hanging is too good for him, said Mr. Cruelty, 
Let us despatch him out of the way, said Mr. Hatelight. 
Then, said Mr. Implacable, might I have all the world 
given me, I could not be reconciled to him ; therefore, let 
us forthwith bring him in guilty of death." 

Abstract qualities of character were never clothed in 
more substantial flesh and blood than these jurymen. 
Spenser's knights in the Fairy Queen are mere shadows 
to them. Faithful was, of course, condemned, scourged, 
buffeted, lanced in his feet with knives, stoned, stabbed, 
at last burned, and spared the pain of travelling further 
on the narrow road. A chariot and horses were- waiting 
to bear him through the clouds, the nearest way to the 
Celestial Gate. Christian, who it seems had been re- 
manded, contrives to escape. He is joined by Hopeful, a 
convert whom he has made in the town, and they pursue 
their journey in company. A second person is useful 
dramatically, and Hopeful takes Faithful's place. Leaving 
Vanity Fair, they are again on the Pilgrim's road. There 
they encounter Mr. Bye-ends. Bye-ends comes from the 
town of Plain-Speech, where he has a large kindred, My 
Lord Turnabout, my Lord Timeserver, Mr. Facing -both- 
ways, Mr. Two Tongues, the parson of the parish. Bye- 
ends himself was married to a daughter of Lady Feign- 
ings. Bunyan's invention in such things was inexhaustible. 



ix.] "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 165 

They have more trials of the old kind with which Bun- 
van himself was so familiar. They cross the River of 
Life and even drink at it, yet for all this, and directly 
after, they stray into Bye -path Meadow. They lose 
themselves in the grounds of Doubting Castle, and are 
seized upon by Giant Despair — still a prey to doubt — still 
uncertain whether religion be not a dream, even after they 
have fought with wild beasts in Vanity Fair and have 
drunk of the water of life. Nowhere does Bunyan show 
better how well he knew the heart of man. Christian 
even thinks of killing himself in the dungeons of Doubt- 
ing Castle. Hopeful cheers him up; they break their 
prison, recover the road again, and arrive at the Delectable 
Mountains in Emmanuel's own land. There it might be 
thought the danger would be over, but it is not so. Even 
in Emmanuel's Land there is a door in the side of a hill 
which is a byeway to hell, and beyond Emmanuel's Land 
is the country of conceit, a new and special temptation 
for those who think that they are near salvation. Here 
they encounter " a brisk lad of the neighbourhood," need- 
ed soon after for a particular purpose, who is a good liver, 
prays devoutly, fasts regularly, pays tithes punctually, and 
hopes that everyone will get to heaven by the religion 
which he professes, provided he fears God and tries to 
do his duty. The name of this brisk lad is Ignorance. 
Leaving him, they are caught in a net by Flatterer, and 
are smartly whipped by " a shining one," who lets them 
out of it. False ideas and vanity lay them open once 
more to their most dangerous enemy. They meet a man 
coming toward them from the direction in which they are 
going. They tell him that they are on the way to Mount 
Zion. He laughs scornfully, and answers: — 

"There is no such place as you dream of in all the 



166 BUNYAN. [chap. 

world. When I was at home in my own country, I heard 
as you now affirm, and from hearing I went out to see ; 
and have been seeking this city these twenty years, but I 
find no more of it than I did the first day I went out. I 
am going back again, and will seek to refresh myself with 
things which. I then cast away for hopes of that which I 
now see is not." 

Still uncertainty — even on the verge of eternity — 
strange, doubtless, and reprehensible to Right Reverend 
persons, who never " cast away " anything ; to whom a 
religious profession has been a highway to pleasure and 
preferment, who live in the comfortable assurance that as 
it has been in this life so it will be in the next. Only 
moral obliquity of the worst kind could admit a doubt 
about so excellent a religion as this. But Bunyan was 
not a Right Reverend. Christianity had brought him no 
palaces and large revenues, and a place among the great 
of the land. If Christianity was not true, his whole life 
was folly and illusion, and the dread that it might be so 
clung to his belief like its shadow. 

The way was still long. The pilgrims reach the En- 
chanted Ground, and are drowsy and tired. Ignorance 
comes up with them again. He talks much about himself. 
He tells them of the good motives that come into his 
mind and comfort him as he walks. His heart tells him 
that he has left all for God and heaven. His belief and 
his life agree together, and he is humbly confident that his 
hopes are well-founded. When they speak to him of 
Salvation by Faith and Conviction by Sin, he cannot un- 
derstand what they mean. As he leaves them they are 
reminded of one Temporary, " once a forward man in re- 
ligion." Temporary dwelt in Graceless, " a town two 
miles from Honesty, next door to one Turnback." He 



ix.] "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 167 

41 was going on pilgrimage, but became acquainted with 
one Save Self, and was never more heard of." 

These figures all mean something. They correspond in 
part to Bunyan's own recollection of his own trials. Part- 
ly he is indulging his humour by describing others who 
were more astray than he was. It was over at last : the 
pilgrims arrive at the land of Beulah, the beautiful sunset 
after the storms were all past. Doubting Castle can be 
seen no more, and between them and their last rest there 
remains only the deep river over which there is no bridge, 
the river of Death. On the hill beyond the waters glitter 
the towers and domes of the Celestial City ; but through 
the river they must first pass, and they find it deeper or 
shallower according to the strength of their faith. They 
go through, Hopeful feeling the bottom all along ; Chris- 
tian still in character, not without some horror, and fright- 
ened by hobgoblins. On the other side they are received 
by angels, and are carried to their final home, to live for 
ever in the Prince's presence. Then follows the only pas- 
sage which the present writer reads with regret in this ad- 
mirable book. It is given to the self-righteous Ignorance, 
who, doubtless, had been provoking with " his good mo- 
tives that comforted him as he walked ;" but Bunyan's 
zeal might have been satisfied by inflicting a lighter chas- 
tisement upon him. He comes up to the river : he crosses 
without the difficulties which attended Christian and Hope- 
ful. " It happened that there was then at the place one 
Vain Hope, a Ferryman, that with his boat" (some viati- 
cum or priestly absolution) " helped him over." He as- 
cends the hill, and approaches the city, but no angels are 
in attendance, " neither did any man meet him with the 
least encouragement." Above the gate there was the verse 
written — "Blessed are they that do His commandments, 



168 BUNYAN. [chap. 

that they may have right to the Tree of Life, and may enr 
ter in through the gate into the city." Bunyan, who be- 
lieved that no man could keep the commandments, and 
had no right to anything but damnation, must have in- 
troduced the words as if to mock the unhappy wretch who, 
after all, had tried to keep the commandments as well as 
most people, and was seeking admittance, with a con- 
science moderately at ease. " He was asked by the men 
that looked over the gate — Whence come you, and what 
would you have?" He answered, " I have eaten and drunk 
in the presence of the King, and he has taught in our 
street." Then they asked him for his certificate, that they 
might go in and show it to the king. So he fumbled in 
his bosom for one, and found none. Then said they, 
" Have you none ?" But the man answered never a word. 
So they told the king ; but he would not come down to see 
him, but commanded the two shining ones that conducted 
Christian and Hopeful to the city, to go out and take Ig- 
norance and bind him hand and foot, and have him away. 
Then they took him up and carried him through the air 
to the door in the side of the hill, and put him in there. 
" Then," so Bunyan ends, " I saw that there was a way to 
hell even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the 
City of Destruction ; so I. awoke, and behold it was a 
dream !" 

Poor Ignorance ! Hell — such a place as Bunyan imag- 
ined hell to be — was a hard fate for a miserable mortal 
who had failed to comprehend the true conditions of jus- 
tification. We are not told that he was a vain boaster. 
He could not have advanced so near to the door of heaven 
if he had not been really a decent man, though vain and 
silly. Behold, it was a dream ! The dreams which come 
to us when sleep is deep on the soul may be sent direct 



ix.] "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 169 

from some revealing power. When we are near waking, 
the supernatural insight may be refracted through human 
theory. 

Charity will hope that the vision of Ignorance cast 
bound into the mouth of hell, when he was knocking at 
the gate of heaven, came through Homer's ivory gate, and 
that Banyan here was a mistaken interpreter of the spir- 
itual tradition. The fierce inferences of Puritan theology 
are no longer credible to us; yet nobler men than the 
Puritans are not to be found in all English history. It 
will be well if the clearer sight which enables us to detect 
their errors enables us also to recognise their excellence. 

The second part of The Pilgrim's Progress, like most 
second parts, is but a feeble reverberation of the first. It 
is comforting, no doubt, to know that Christian's wife and 
children were not left to their fate in the City of Destruc- 
tion. But Bunyan had given us all that he had to tell 
about the journey, and we do not need a repetition of it. 
Of course there are touches of genius. No writing of 
Bunyan's could be wholly without it. But the rough sim- 
plicity is gone, and instead of it there is a tone of senti- 
ment which is almost mawkish. Giants, dragons, and an- 
gelic champions carry us into a spurious fairy-land, where 
the knight-errant is a preacher in disguise. Fair ladies 
and love matches, however decorously chastened, suit ill 
with the sternness of the moral conflict between the soul 
and sin. Christiana and her children are tolerated for the 
pilgrim's sake to whom they belong. Had they appealed 
to our interest on their own merits, we would have been 
contented to wish them well through their difficulties, and 
to trouble ourselves no further about them, 



CHAPTER X. 



LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 



Little remains to be told of Bunyan's concluding years. 
No friends preserved his letters. No diaries of his own 
survive to gratify curiosity. Men truly eminent think 
too meanly of themselves or their work to care much to 
be personally remembered. He lived for sixteen years 
after his release from the gaol, and those years were spent 
in the peaceful discharge of his congregational duties, in 
writing, in visiting the scattered members of the Baptist 
communion, or in preaching in the villages and woods. 
His outward circumstances were easy. He had a small 
but well -provided house in Bedford, into which he col- 
lected rare and valuable pieces of old furniture and plate, 
and other articles — presents, probably, from those who ad- 
mired him. He visited London annually to preach in the 
Baptist churches. The Pilgrim 's Progress spread his 
fame over England, over Europe, and over the American 
settlements. It was translated into many languages ; and 
so catholic was its spirit, that it was adapted with a few 
alterations for the use even of the Catholics themselves. 
He abstained, as he had done steadily throughout his life, 
from all interference with politics, and the Government in 
turn never again meddled with him. He even received 
offers of promotion to larger spheres of action, which 



chap, x.] LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 171 

might have tempted a meaner nature. But he could 
never be induced to leave Bedford, and there he quietly 
stayed through changes of ministry, Popish plots, and 
Monmouth rebellions, while the terror of a restoration of 
Popery was bringing on the Revolution — careless of kings 
and cabinets, and confident that Giant Pope had lost his 
power for harm, and thenceforward could only bite his 
nails at the passing pilgrims. Once only, after the failure 
of the Exclusion Bill, he seems to have feared that violent 
measures might again be tried against him. It is even 
said that he was threatened with arrest, and it was on this 
occasion that he made over his property to his wife. The 
policy of James II., however, transparently treacherous 
though it was, for the time gave security to the Noncon- 
formist congregations; and in the years which immediately 
preceded the final expulsion of the Stuarts, liberty of con- 
science was under fewer restrictions than it had been in 
the most rigorous days of the Reformation, or under the 
Long Parliament itself. Thus the anxiety passed away, 
and Bunyan was left undisturbed to finish his earthly 
work. 

He was happy in his family. His blind child, for 
whom he had been so touchingly anxious, had died while 
he was in prison. His other children lived and did well ; 
and his brave companion, who had spoken so stoutly for 
him to the judges, continued at his side. His health, it 
was said, had suffered from his confinement ; but the only 
serious illness which we hear of was an attack of " sweat- 
ing sickness," which came upon him in 1687, and from 
which he never thoroughly recovered. He was then fifty- 
nine, and in the next year he died. 

His end was characteristic. It was brought on by ex- 
posure when he was engaged in an act of charity. A 
M 8* 



172 BUN Y AN. [chap. 

quarrel had broken out in a family at Reading with which 
Bunyan had some acquaintance. A father had taken of- 
fence at his son, and threatened to disinherit him. Bun- 
yan undertook a journey on horseback from Bedford to 
Reading in the hope of reconciling them. He succeeded, 
but at the cost of his life. Returning by London, he was 
overtaken on the road by a storm of rain, and was wetted 
through before he could find shelter. The chill, falling 
on a constitution already weakened by illness, brought on 
fever. He was able to reach the house of Mr. Strudwick, 
one his London friends ; but he never left his bed after- 
wards. In ten days he was dead. The exact date is un- 
certain. It was towards the end of August, 1688, between 
two and three months before the landing of King Wil- 
liam. He was buried in Mr. Strud wick's vault, in the Dis- 
senters' burying-ground at Bunhill Fields. His last words 
were, " Take me, for I come to Thee." 

So ended, at the age of sixty, a man who, if his impor- 
tance may be measured by the influence which he has ex- 
erted over succeeding generations, must be counted among 
the most extraordinary persons whom England has pro- 
duced. It has been the fashion to dwell on the disad- 
vantages of his education, and to regret the carelessness 
of nature which brought into existence a man of genius 
in a tinker's hut at Elstow. Nature is less partial than 
she appears, and all situations in life have their compensa- 
tions along with them. 

Circumstances, I should say, qualified Bunyan perfectly 
well for the work which he had to do. If he had gone 
to school, as he said, with Aristotle and Plato ; if he had 
been broken in at a university and been turned into a 
bishop ; if he had been in any cne of the learned profes- 
sions, he might easily have lost, or might have never known, 



x] LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 173 

the secret of his powers. He was born to be the Poet- 
apostle of the English middle classes, imperfectly educated 
like himself; and, being one of themselves, he had the 
key of their thoughts and feelings in his own heart. Like 
nine out of ten of his countrymen, he came into the world 
with no fortune but his industry. He had to work with 
his hands for his bread, and to advance by the side of 
his neighbours along the road of common business. His 
knowledge was scanty, though of rare quality. He knew 
his Bible probably by heart. He had studied history in 
Foxe's Martyrs, but nowhere else that we can trace. The 
rest of his mental furniture was gathered at first hand 
from his conscience, his life, and his occupations. Thus, 
every idea which he received falling into a soil naturally 
fertile, sprouted up fresh, vigorous, and original. He con- 
fessed to have felt (as a man of his powers could hardly 
have failed to feel) continued doubts about the Bible 
and the reality of the Divine government. It has been 
well said that when we look into the world to find the 
image of God, it is as if we were to stand before a look- 
ing-glass, expecting to see ourselves reflected there, and to 
see nothing. Education scarcely improves our perception 
in this respect ; and wider information, wider acquaintance 
with the thoughts of other men in other ages and coun- 
tries, might as easily have increased his difficulties as have 
assisted him in overcoming them. He was not a man 
who could have contented himself with compromises and 
half-convictions. No force could have subdued him into 
a decent Anglican divine — a "Mr. Two Tongues, parson 
of the parish." He was passionate and thorough-going. 
The authority of conscience presented itself to him only 
in the shape of religious obligation. Religion once shaken 
into a "perhaps," would have had no existence to him; 



174 BUNYAN. [chap. 

and it is easy to conceive a university -bred Bunyan, an 
intellectual meteor, flaring uselessly across the sky and 
disappearing in smoke and nothingness. 

Powerful temperaments are necessarily intense. Bun- 
yan, born a tinker, had heard right and wrong preached to 
him in the name of the Christian creed. He concluded 
after a struggle that Christianity was true, and on that 
conviction he built himself up into what he was. It might 
have been the same, perhaps, with Burns had he been born 
a century before. Given Christianity as an unquestiona- 
bly true account of the situation and future prospects of 
man, the feature of it most appalling to the imagination 
is that hell-fire — a torment exceeding the most horrible 
which fancy can conceive, and extending into eternity — 
awaits the enormous majority of the human race. The 
dreadful probability seized hold on the young Bunyan's 
mind. He shuddered at it when awake. In the visions 
of the night it came before him in the tremendous details 
of the dreadful reality. It became the governing thought 
in his nature. 

Such a belief, if it does not drive a man to madness, 
will at least cure him of trifling. It will clear his mind 
of false sentiment, take the nonsense out of him, and en- 
able him to resist vulgar temptation as nothing else will. 
The danger is that the mind may not bear the strain, that 
the belief itself may crack and leave nothing. Bunyan 
was hardly tried, but in him the belief did not crack. It 
spread over his character. It filled him first with terror; 
then with a loathing of sin, which entailed so awful a pen- 
alty ; then, as his personal fears were allayed by the rec- 
ognition of Christ, it turned to tenderness and pity. 

There was no fanaticism in Bunyan ; nothing harsh or 
savage. His natural humour perhaps saved him. His 



x.] LAST DAYS AND DEATH. 175 

few recorded sayings all refer to the one central question ; 
but healthy seriousness often best expresses itself in play- 
ful qnaintness. He was once going somewhere disguised 
as a waggoner. He was overtaken by a constable who had 
a warrant to arrest him. The constable asked him if he 
knew that devil of a fellow Bunyan. "Know him !" Bun- 
yan said. " You might call him a devil if you knew him 
as well as I once did/' 

A Cambridge student was trying to show him what a 
divine thing reason was — " reason, the chief glory of man, 
which distinguished him from a beast," &c, &c. 

Bunyan growled out : " Sin distinguishes man from 
beast. Is sin divine?" 

He was extremely tolerant in his terms of Church mem- 
bership. He offended the stricter part of his congregation 
by refusing even to make infant baptism a condition of 
exclusion. The only persons with whom he declined to 
communicate were those whose lives were openly immoral; 
His chief objection to the Church of England was the ad- 
mission of the ungodly to the Sacraments. He hated 
party titles and quarrels upon trifles. He desired himself 
to be called a Christian or a Believer, or " any name which 
was approved by the Holy Ghost." Divisions, he said, 
were to Churches like wars to countries. Those who talk- 
ed most about religion cared least for it ; and controversies 
about doubtful things, and things of little moment, ate up 
all zeal for things which were practicable and indisputable. 

"In countenance," wrote a friend, "he appeared to be 
of a stern and rough temper, but in his conversation mild 
and affable ; not given to loquacity or to much discourse 
in company unless some urgent occasion required it; ob- 
serving never to boast of himself or his parts, but rather 
to seem low in his own eyes, and submit himself to the 



178 BUNYAN. [chap. x. 

cense to be. Until " duty " can be presented to us in a 
shape which will compel our recognition of it with equal 
or superior force, the passing away of " the conviction of 
sin " can operate only to obscure our aspirations after a 
high ideal of life and character. The scientific theory 
may be correct, and it is possible that we may be standing 
on the verge of the most momentous intellectual revolu- 
tion which has been experienced in the history of our race. 
It may be so, and also it may not be so. It may be that 
the most important factors in the scientific equation are 
beyond the reach of human intellect. However it be, the 
meat which gives strength to the man is poison to the 
child ; and as yet we are still children, and are likely to 
remain children. "Every relief from outward restraint," 
says one who was not given to superstition, " if it be not 
attended with increased power of self-command, is simply 
fatal." Men of intelligence, therefore, to whom life is not 
a theory but a stern fact, conditioned round with endless 
possibilities of wrong and suffering, though they may 
never again adopt the letter of Bunyan's creed, will con- 
tinue to see in conscience an authority for which culture 
is no substitute ; they will conclude that in one form or 
other responsibility is not a fiction but a truth ; and, so 
long as this conviction lasts, The Pilgrim's Progress will 
still be dear to all men of all creeds who share in it, even 
though it pleases the "elect" modern philosophers to 
describe its author as a " Philistine of genius." 



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